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CYCLES  OF  PERSONAL  BELIEF 


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<aL 


CYCLES 
OF  PERSONAL  BELIEF 


BY 


WALDO  EMERSON  FORBES 


BOSTON  AND   NEW  YORK 

HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 
1917 


h 


COFYRXGHT,  I917,  BY  WALDO  BMBRSON  FORBBS 
ALL  RIGHTS  RBSERVBD 

Published  March  tqrf 


FOREWORD 

A  FRESH  wind  blows  out  of  the  dawn.  In  infancy 
the  world  itself  is  a  paradise.  But  when  after- 
wards we  look  back  upon  the  auroral  splendor  of 
early  childhood,  we  wonder  how  far  to  credit  our 
memory.  In  the  freshness  of  morning  that  radi- 
ance reappears  now  and  then.  The  early  light 
recalls  to  the  heart  the  condition  of  original  purity 
from  which  our  consciousness  has  sprung.  The 
course  of  the  spring  is  full  of  fragrance  and  music, 
from  the  time  when  the  crocuses  bloom,  and  the 
bluebirds  begin  singing,  till  the  sea-wind  comes 
across  the  hay-fields  gathering  the  scent  of  the 
first  opening  wild  roses.  The  earth  is  stored  with 
recollections,  but  there  dwells  in  these  an  alien 
sweetness.  Natural  objects  which  gave  us  our 
first  impressions  must  have  reflected  the  light  of 
some  celestial  sphere,  as  occasionally  upon  smooth 
surfaces  we  see  with  surprise  a  far-off  view  super- 
imposed upon  the  outline  of  the  surface  itself. 

Within  the  enchantment  of  childhood's  happi- 
ness the  heart  rested  in  complete  confidence.  It 
was  a  condition  of  peace  which  left  no  trace  of 
death  or  evil  within  the  horizon,  and  if  the  soul 
could  find  itself  therein  once  more,  its  question- 
ings and  wanderings  would  cease.  But  even  with 


358030 


FOREWORD 

the  evanescence  of  its  augury,  even  with  all  its 
rarity,  the  dream  feeling  which  clings  to  the 
earliest  memories  of  life  is  but  a  hint  of  what  the 
heart  would  claim  as  its  natural  birthright. 


CONTENTS 

Part  I.    Illusion 


3 

I.  INTRODUCTORY       .         .         •         • 

BELIEF      .        .        • g 

THE  WORLD 

Part  II.    Disillusion 

17 

II.  DISILLUSION    .        •        •        • 

Part  III.    Reillusion 

.      ...    37 

III.  CONSCIOUSNESS 

AXIOMATIC  PROPOSITIONS 

THE  will:  good  and  evil 

THE  will:  NECESSITY  AND  FATE 54 

IV.   IDEAS jQ 

TIME -^ 

LAW **.*..      78 

UNITY \        \        \         ,      %Z 

SELECTION        ..•••••*  gg 

V.   REILLUSION *    ^^^ 

VI.  immortality 

Part  IV.    Conclusion 

125 

VII.  CONCLUSION    .        .        •        •        • 

151 

POSTSCRIPT 


CYCLES   OF    PERSONAL  BELIEF 

PART   I 

ILLUSION 


CYCLES 
OF   PERSONAL   BELIEF 

CHAPTER  I 

INTRODUCTORY 

Philosophy  Is  the  yearning  for  vision,  the  effort 
of  the  soul  toward  light.  But  In  the  quest  to  which 
these  cravings  give  rise  there  are  endless  perplex- 
ities. The  definitions  themselves  are  wayward 
and  illusive  as  if  instinct  with  a  mischievous  spirit 
of  life.  The  study  of  truth  is  not  merely  a  matter 
of  map-making.  Especially  in  logic  and  meta- 
physics, the  surveying  process  wearies  us.  We 
compile  a  cold  system  of  diagrams,  while  living 
thought  is  ringing  In  the  world  outside.  Life  has 
a  terrible  inevitable  forward  movement.  It  goes 
whether  we  manage  to  name  It  or  not;  and  the  life 
of  thought  moves  with  the  rest.  The  writer  cannot 
afford  to  crowd  truth  Into  barren  formulas.  It  can 
never  be  understood  by  analysis.  Moreover,  the 
corpses  of  thought  are  apt  to  be  repulsive.  How- 
ever valuable  the  results  of  mental  anatomical 
study  may  be,  they  are  trivial  beside  the  living 
truth.  It  is  better  to  live  among  crude  sensations 
than  to  study  a  lifeless  philosophy.  The  vision  of 
ideas  banishes  the  thought  of  definitions. 


CYCLES    OF    PERSONAL    BELIEF 

All  the  genius,  all  the  knowledge,  all  the  art  in 
the  world  has  but  sketched  fragments  of  the 
mighty  portrait  of  truth.  However  clear  certain 
outlines  may  stand  forth,  they  are  but  partial, 
giving  a  hint  of  something  beyond;  and  all  for- 
mulas and  definitions  are  less  than  the  idea  they 
seek  to  express. 

For  this  reason  I  am  not  attempting  in  the  fol- 
lowing chapters  to  outline  a  systematic  philos- 
ophy, but  rather  to  sketch  in  simple  terms  cer- 
tain significant  aspects  in  the  development  of 
human  thought,  and  to  make  a  confession  of  faith 
which  shall  as  nearly  as  possible  conform  to  the 
demands  of  my  own  reason. 

BELIEF 

Man  wakes  from  the  sleep  of  infancy  into  a 
condition  of  belief,  and  presently,  finding  a  great 
many  transformations  going  on  in  and  around 
himself,  he  finds  an  imperative  need  of  investi- 
gating the  beliefs  which  have  formed  the  specific 
components  of  the  believing  state  of  mind.  This 
spirit  of  investigation  is  nothing  else  than  the 
thirst  for  truth.  All  the  substance  or  potency 
which  a  belief  can  have  must  be  given  to  it  by  its 
truth,  so  that  a  false  belief  has  lost  its  savor  as 
soon  as  we  are  really  convinced  that  it  is  false. 

Now  belief  is  a  sort  of  matrix  from  which  our 
activities  arise.  It  is  the  substance  of  the  child's 
happy  confidence  in  his  first  impressions.  It  is 
this  which  gives  the  world  its  seeming  stability. 


BELIEF 

Instinctively  man  believes  in  the  reality  of  the 
immediate  facts  and  forms  with  which  he  is  deal- 
ing, and  perhaps  he  clings  the  more  tenaciously 
to  this  habit  the  less  ground  he  has  for  doing  so. 
A  child  wonders  continually.  He  is  half  prepared 
to  see  the  world  dissolve,  but  a  man  who  has 
already  seen  much  of  it  dissolve,  doggedly  sticks 
to  what  he  has  left.  However  dreamlike  and  illu- 
sory phenomena  may  prove,  the  solid  substance 
of  the  world  before  us,  here  and  now,  is  real,  and 
in  its  reality  we  believe. 

Youth  is  the  period  of  belief,  and  as  the  hopes 
and  infatuations  of  youth  interest  us  most,  so  it 
is  the  fresh,  untamed  innocence  and  force  of  their 
illusions  which  give  primitive  peoples  so  much 
charm.  But  as  we  look  upon  these  believers  acting 
out  their  lives  in  good  faith,  as  we  perceive  that 
in  most  cases  the  strength  of  a  man's  belief 
measures  the  extent  of  his  activity^  we  may  well 
pause  in  wonder  at  the  potency  of  belief  as  such. 
It  is  strange  to  see  a  man  fervently  acting  his  part 
in  the  world,  while  his  scientific  neighbor  sees  at  a 
glance  how  insubstantial  are  his  realities,  how  com- 
plete his  delusion;  as  if  a  child  looked  upon  the 
painted  scenery  of  the  stage  and  thought  to  climb 
its  trees  or  smell  its  roses.  Crude  superstitions  or 
specious  tenets  alike  command  us.  I  suppose 
Machiavelli  believed  in  the  efficiency,  wisdom, 
and  even  right  of  his  doctrines.  Do  not  even  the 
German  people  believe  whatever  the  Kaiser  and 
his  ministers  tell  them.'*    History  abounds  with 


CYCLES    OF    PERSONAL    BELIEF 

wars  carried  on  in  behalf  of  cults  and  doctrines 
which  soon  proved  themselves  wrong. 

It  is  not  easy  to  understand  the  rights  and 
powers  of  belief.  Santa  Claus  retreated  early  from 
our  lives.  We  assume,  perhaps,  that  when  the 
child  discovers  the  parents  by  the  chimney  late 
at  night  the  fiction  evaporates  into  nothing.  But 
have  we  really  solved  the  problem  of  the  elfish 
power  over  the  child's  imagination  .f*  Somehow  a 
spirit  dwelt  in  the  chimney  in  those  first  Christ- 
mas mornings.  You  may  call  him  subjective  if 
you  like,  but  to  what  avail?  Thereby  the  mystery 
\  only  becomes  the  greater,  for  how  could  a  child's 
^mind  create  such  a  being  .^  The  grown-ups  were 
but  unwitting  agents,  for  they  understand  no 
longer  the  quality  of  that  influence  and  person- 
ality. It  is  the  child  who  gives  or  discovers  in 
Santa  Claus  his  character  and  actuality. 

If  an  atheist  maintains  that  there  is  no  God, 
so  long  as  a  man  is  religious  it  will  have  no  more 
effect  upon  him  than  if  some  one  tells  us,  when 
we  are  warming  our  hands  at  a  good  fire,  that 
there  is  no  such  thing  as  fire,  or,  when  we  are 
made  happy  by  a  kindness,  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  kindness.  Thus  in  every  belief,  whether 
N  it  appears  to  be  rooted  in  nature,  or  only  in  itself, 
we  are  dealing  with  an  actuality. 

Europe  bears  the  weight  of  countless  churches, 
a  testimony  to  this,  for  why,  in  a  world  so  strictly 
governed  by  biological  and  economic  laws,  why, 
in  the  struggle  for  existence,  did  the  impoverished 

6 


BELIEF 

Catholic  communities  spend  their  substance  upon 
\  such  unproductive  work  as  building  vast  cathe- 
drals? Some  people  like  to  account  for  the  reli- 
gious impulse  by  explaining  that  it  is  good  for 
people  to  believe  in  a  God  whether  there  is  one  or 
not.  A  clear-headed  child  would  repudiate  this, 
would  instinctively  rebel  against  the  flippancy 
which  supposes  God  a  figment  of  the  imagination, 
created  by  man  for  the  sake  of  the  glow  of  belief. 
Neither  religious  belief,  nor  any  constructive 
state  of  mind  has  such  shallow  foundations,  nor 
can  they  be  fostered  by  any  such  folly.  Wherever 
belief  has  vitality  there  is  a  tap-root  sucking  at 
truth  itself;  and  however  much  our  beliefs  are 
mixed  up  with  follies,  errors,  and  confusions,  they 
derive  nourishment  from  reality.  And  if  the  belief 
seems  to  have  no  real  foundation  whatever,  we 
must  still  be  careful  not  to  dismiss  it  hastily,  for 
like  an  air  plant  it  may  subsist  upon  an  invisible 
but  real  aliment.  We  may  well  be  cautious  in 
challenging  the  springs  of  action  of  persons  whom 
we  do  not  understand.  There  is  no  more  occasion 
to  quarrel  with  the  great  extent  of  religious  forms 
and  usages  than  with  the  expanses  of  lichens, 
mos6es,  and  grass  which  cover  the  earth. 

Thought,  however,  can  never  rest  contented 
with  belief  alone.  We  are  continually  striving  to 
pass  that  borderland  between  belief  and  knowl- 
edge where  most  of  our  intellectual  life  is  spent. 
yThe  thirst  for  truth  can  never  be  satisfied  while 
error  of  any  sort  is  suspected.   The  quest  carries 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

us  far  beyond  the  pleasant  havens  of  faith.  Doubt 
^  and  criticism  attack  everything.  They  must  at 
least  have  a  hearing.  If  to  winnow  out  the  illusory 
element  of  facts  appears  a  superhuman  task,  if 
almost  all  our  results  remain  within  the  realm  of 
greater  or  less  probability,  if  the  positive  principles 
of  life  are  at  best  but  dimly  appreciated,  still  we 
cherish  the  knowledge  of  a  simple,  heavenly  light 
which  leads  us  toward  divine  and  absolute  truth. 

THE  WORLD 

The  first  product  of  belief  is  the  world;  that  is, 
the  world  as  we  perceive  it.  This  would  seem  to 
arise  naturally  enough  from  our  first  impressions, 
and  our  interpretations  of  them.  We  believe  in  a 
consistent  whole,  and  at  first  we  do  not  trouble 
ourselves  with  the  question  of  how  much  our  im- 
pressions are  necessitated  from  without,  and  how 
far  they  are  colored  or  modified  from  within.  Yet 
how  strangely  compounded  is  even  the  familiar 
ground  of  everyday  civilized  life.  Education  and 
culture  soon  teach  us  that  much  of  our  established 
views  upon  the  nature  of  the  world  are  of  com- 
paratively recent  date.  An  intelligent  child  while 
growing  up  absorbs  without  knowing  it  the  Coper- 
nican  astronomy,  the  atomic  theory,  the  theory  of 
the  conservation  of  energy,  the  law  of  gravity, 
the  law  of  evolution,  as  well  as  countless  earlier 
explanations  which  rendered  the  world  more  in- 
telligible. It  is  an  intricate  study  to  ascertain  the 
origin  of  our  beliefs  —  to  show,  besides  our  debt 

a 


THE    WORLD 

to  European  civilized  thought,  what  we  owe  to 
the  Greeks,  what  to  the  Hebrews,  and  what  to 
the  Norsemen.  How  the  world  would  appear  were 
these  and  similar  elements  in  our  belief  eliminated 
we  could  not  tell;  but  the  simpler  states  of  mind 
can  be  partly  recalled  from  childish  experiences. 

The  world  at  first  sight  appears  to  be  a  fixed, 
unchanging  reality,  or  rather  a  reality  with  certain 
definite  methods  of  change  constantly  recurring. 
Our  early  simple  point  of  view  takes  for  granted 
the  stability  of  facts.  We  do  not  expect  to  find 
mystery  and  magic.  If  there  are  fairies  they  are 
supernatural,  or  one  might  say,  they  are  read 
between  the  lines,  and  there  is  nothing  strange  in 
this.  They  do  not  upset  nature  by  their  presence. 
If  they  are  not  expected,  neither  do  they  occasion 
surprise.  That  the  world,  the  geologic  world,  pro- 
duced us,  is  not  a  troublesome  proposition.  There 
is  nature  more  substantial  than  we.  We  die;  it 
does  not.  We  are  subject  to  its  agencies,  while  it, 
except  to  a  trifling  extent  is  uninfluenced  by  our- 
selves. Our  sensations  are  caused  by  the  elements 
external  to  ourselves.  We  are  simply  adapted  to 
receive  impressions  from  what  is  going  on  outside 
of  us  anyway,  regardless  of  our  perception  of  it. 

In  early  life  what  innocent,  irresponsible  crea- 
tures we  are,  humble,  unassuming  dependencies 
upon  the  back  of  a  more  or  less  friendly  round 
animal.  What  a  joyous  spirit  reigns,  where  every- 
thing is  possible,  everything  unquestioned.  Na- 
ture is  resonant  and  echoing,  thronged  with  per- 


CYCLES    OF    PERSONAL     BELIEF 

sonalities.  The  vestiges  of  mythology  with  hints 
of  depth  and  beauty  are  with  us  still.  Our  own 
childish  folklore  and  mythology  tell  us  how  it  was 
with  primitive  peoples.  It  must  come  about  nat- 
urally and  inevitably  that  man  imagines  he  de- 
tects the  presence  of  unseen  powers  behind  nat- 
ural phenomena,  and  a  conscious  active  will 
appears  to  direct  some  at  least  of  the  natural 
events.  A  stricter  use  of  the  intellect  gradually 
dispels  the  mists  which  must  at  all  times  float  in 
the  minds  of  primitive  people.  Outlines  thought 
to  be  supernatural  and  shifting  simply  because 
these  mists  envelop  them,  now  partially,  and 
again  completely,  appear  at  last,  when  the  mists 
have  cleared  away,  sharply  defined,  and  continu- 
ous with  the  foreground.  An  explanation  clear 
and  explicit  accounts  for  the  behavior  of  a  comet, 
for  instance,  and  it  is  a  portent  no  longer. 

When  the  methods  by  which  the  processes  of 
nature  take  place  are  understood,  and  it  is  sug- 
gested that  tide,  wind,  cloud,  and  rain  proceed 
mechanically,  the  belief  in  a  conscious  will  in 
nature  becomes  correspondingly  harder.  The 
view,  once  hazy  and  changeable,  relatively  dream- 
like, fragmentary,  subject  to  inconsequent  and 
rapid  shifting,  becomes  orderly  and  predictable. 
What  need  of  a  will  or  intelligence  to  explain  the 
existence  of  the  facts  ? 

Presently,  however,  we  realize  that  the  clear- 
ness which  has  been  introduced  into  nature,  is  the 
work  of  the  mind;  and  then,  with  the  realization 

10 


THE    WORLD 

of  the  power  of  the  mind,  comes  the  question, 
Since  the  mind  has  drawn  the  portrait,  what  else 
can  there  be  besides  the  mind  ?  Is  nature  in  itself 
simply  a  blank  sheet  on  which  thought  has 
sketched  a  world?  With  the  emphasis  laid  thus 
on  mind  the  thinking  process  tends  to  assert  itself 
to  an  extreme,  until  one  day  the  thinker  wonders 
if  he  is  alone  in  the  universe,  his  surroundings, 
friends,  family,  and  all,  his  own  dream.  There 
has  never  been  any  denial  of  this  solipsism  except 
by  playing  out  the  dream  for  what  it  is  worth. 
If  in  this  mood,  the  dreamer  punches  one  of  the 
dream  figures  on  the  nose,  metaphysical  specula- 
tion will  have  to  be  suspended,  and  the  laws  ac- 
cording to  which  these  figures  appear  to  act 
become  more  interesting  than  the  estimate  of  the 
foundation  upon  which  they  rest. 

Upon  this  and  similar  considerations  rests  the 
study  of  nature.  The  intellectual  world  to-day 
has  largely  reverted  to  the  condition  of  believing 
in  the  absolute  reality  of  an  order  external  to  the 
mind,  of  which  the  mind  is  the  interpreter.  The 
more  tyrannous  the  mind,  the  more  absolute  its 
authority,  the  more  it  subdues  phenomena,  the 
less  conscious  it  becomes  of  its  own  ascendancy. 
Keen  thinkers  like  Huxley  give  us  a  vigorous 
realistic  outline  of  the  world,  to  a  great  extent 
*  ignoring  how  much  this  is  the  result  of  the  power 
of  their  own  assertive  intellects.  Then  like  all 
original  thinkers  they  are  followed  by  a  host  of 
bigots  —  scientific  bigots  who  unlike  their  mas- 

II 


CYCLES    OF    PERSONAL    BELIEF 

ters  have  failed  to  perceive  the  restless  infinity 
beating  against  the  sea  walls  of  form.  Industri- 
ously they  have  attacked  the  world  and  under- 
taken its  description  down  to  the  minutest  detail. 
Indeed,  observing  with  what  thoroughness  the 
accumulation  of  knowledge  has  been  carried  on 
we  ask,  Can  or  cannot  there  exist  an  encyclo- 
paedic description  of  the  world?  Do  physics  and 
chemistry  embrace  just  so  many  known  factors 
already  catalogued,  and  so  many  unknown  fac- 
tors which  will  one  day  be  tamed,  photographed, 
and  listed? 

But  attention  alike  to  the  interpreter  and  to  the 
interpretation  shows  us  how  the  nature  of  the 
world  presents  insoluble  problems  to  the  enquirer. 
The  terms  of  space  present  the  question  of  infin- 
^ite  extent  and  infinite  divisibility.  Astronomy  is 
a  science  of  what  we  can  see,  but  all  that  it  can 
tell  us  terminates  at  inevitable  encircling  limita- 
tions. Chemistry  can  tell  us  certain  practical 
properties  of  matter,  but  of  its  ultimate  constitu- 
tion, nothing.  Time  allows  us  to  understand  the 
ways  and  means  of  forces  up  to  a  certain  point; 
but  time  if  we  reflect  upon  it  long  unsettles  our 
theories.    Infinity  permeates  everything. 

Reflection  only  deepens  the  need  for  reflection. 
With  the  intellect  our  only  interpreter,  how  faith- 
ful has  it  been  in  its  interpretation  of  this  chang- 
ing nature  outside  ourselves?  Did  the  intellect 
construct  the  whole  fabric  of  our  beliefs?  Is  reli- 
gion only  a  matter  of  personal  dogma,  and  even 

iz 


THE    WORLD 

the  whole  world  a  piece  of  architectural  fiction; 
religion  after  all  but  a  prescription  to  please  the 
dramatic  sense,  science  a  more  convenient  though 
less  entertaining  set  of  dogmas,  and  life  quite 
nameless  and  inexplicable,  running  its  own  course 
independent  of  the  two?  Is  all  belief  a  matter  of 
dogmas  taken  up  out  of  the  nameless  flowing 
essence  of  the  soul,  because  we  feared  to  trust 
ourselves  unsupported  on  the  waves? 


PART  II 

DISILLUSION 


CHAPTER  II 

DISILLUSION 

Criticism,  Analysis,  Scepticism  are  the  work  of 
the  Destroyer.  The  spirit  of  doubt  withers  the 
outward  aspect  of  belief;  but  it  penetrates,  chills 
and  transforms  the  inner  nature  of  the  man  as 
well.  For  the  growing  boy,  when  the  picture  that 
once  was  charming  has  lost  its  charm,  when  the 
mysterious  woodshed  and  cow-barn  have  been 
thoroughly  explored  and  all  the  darkest  corners 
penetrated,  when  he  has  climbed  the  highest  hill 
in  the  familiar  distant  landscape,  and  still  more, 
when  for  the  first  time  his  liking  for  a  friend  has 
cooled,  the  quality  of  his  belief  has  changed,  a 
certain  innocence  and  freshness  are  lost.  Doubt 
comes,  like  the  east  wind  rifling  the  beauty  of  the 
orchard,  as  the  petals  of  the  apple  blossoms  fall, 
and  scatters  our  childish  confidence  along  with 
our  specific  beliefs. 

But  the  Destroyer  cannot  by  any  possibility  be 
eliminated  or  exorcised.  He  is  here  together  with 
life,  and  he  must  be  reckoned  with.  If  the  fact  of 
implicit  belief  was  once  real,  the  fact  of  question- 
ing that  belief  is  real  also.  In  the  quest  of  truth 
the  analytical  process  is  inevitable. 

Now  there  are  many  forms  of  scepticism,  but 
the  action  of  doubt  is  alike  in  the  disintegration 
of  any  one  belief  or  any  group  of  beliefs.    The 

17 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

typical  and  familiar  example  is  the  action  of 
scientific  investigation  upon  religious  theory. 
Science  is  one  thing,  scepticism  is  another,  but 
the  sceptic  tendency  was  the  first  effect  of  a  new 
impulse  toward  the  enquiry  into  truth.  The  main 
tendency  of  scientific  thought  at  first  induced  a 
great  wave  of  negation  in  a  field  where  the  posi- 
tive state  of  mind  had  ruled  before.  Again  scien- 
tific thought  is  one  thing,  the  influence  of  science, 
or  the  layman's  view  of  science,  is  another.  The 
progress  of  thought  proceeds  at  difl'erent  rates 
-in  difl'erent  individuals  and  difl'erent  societies. 
Scientists  also  have  taken  a  variety  of  stands 
upon  fundamental  questions.  I  suppose  there  are 
plenty  of  men  to-day  still  clinging  to  a  crude 
deterministic  philosophy;  while  on  the  other 
hand,  there  are  thinkers  of  the  objective  type, 
who  yet  have  so  far  modified  or  abandoned  their 
mechanistic  conceptions  as  to  be  far  beyond  what 
might  have  been  considered  scientifically  ortho- 
dox a  few  years  ago.  But  after  all  there  have 
always  been  idealists,  there  have  always  been 
1^  materialists.  It  is  only  a  question  of  who  has  the 
*  floor.  We  may  take  certain  trends  of  opinion  as 
.  typical  of  the  age.  We  shall  find,  then,  that  the 
intellectual  warfare  through  which  the  process  of 
thought  has  swept  us,  left  the  layman  in  posses- 
sion of  a  negative  portrait  of  the  world  in  place 
of  earlier  religious  beliefs.  In  respect  to  these, 
this  portrait  typified  the  condition  of  disillusion. 
It  was  a  portrait  of  a  materialistic  universe  with- 

l8 


DISILLUSION 

out  spirit,  a  mechanism  determined  by  exact,  un- 
alterable physical  laws. 

Strictly  considered,  this  mechanism  left  no 
room  for  a  conscious  will  which  can  actuate  the 
motions  of  the  earth  and  planets.  We  think  and 
speak  rather  of  the  developments  by  gravity,  by 
centrifugal  force,  by  the  principles  which  are 
associated  with  such  expressions  as  the  nebular 
hypothesis. 

Our  own  world  developed  in  the  universal 
natural  process  which  astronomy  has  fragmen- 
tarily  portrayed.  Enormous  numbers  of  stars  or 
suns,  which  by  their  distribution  suggest,  or  at 
least  do  not  preclude,  the  probability  of  an  infin- 
ite number  beyond  our  powers  of  observation, 
surround  us,  all  evolving  with  a  temporal  history 
analogous  to  that  of  our  own  sun  with  its  planets, 
comets,  and  asteroids.  Our  earth  was  thrown  from 
the  sun,  cooled,  and  following  immutable  laws  its 
surface  geology  brought  about  conditions  favor- 
able to  the  dawn  of  life.  Life  grew  up  by  an  inevit- 
able process  which  it  could  not  have  done  other 
than  follow.  A  law  of  variation  governed  each 
change,  each  onward  step.  A  law  of  inheritance 
governed  the  furtherance  and  preservation  of  all 
that  was  established  and  fit  to  survive.  A  bit  of 
life  pushes  unconsciously  this  way,  then  another 
way,  then  a  third,  till  it  finds  a  way  in  which  it 
can  move  and  grow.  This  way  becomes  the  way. 
It  is  the  only  way.  Life  experiments  uncon- 
sciously.   All  life  thus  experimenting  which  hits 

19 


CYCLES    OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

upon  a  way  that  proves  advantageous  for  the 
preservation  of  this  life  is  more  apt  to  be  pre- 
served, and  that  which  experiments  in  less  advan- 
tageous ways  is  less  apt  to  be  preserved.  In  the 
long  run  the  more  advantageous  will  supersede 
the  less  advantageous.  This  is  how  we  came  here; 
this  also  is  how  our  forms  of  expression,  our  in- 
stitutions, our  thoughts  even,  developed.  Any 
ethical  doctrine  which  assumes  us  to  be  free 
agents,  with  a  choice  between  right  and  wrong, 
is  merely  a  story  which  evolved  because  it  helped 
us  while  immature  —  even  though  false:  for  what 
possible  value  could  a  choice  have  —  why  talk 
about  good  and  bad,  or  the  virtue  of  sacrifice,  or 
any  other  virtue,  if  every  action,  every  thought, 
every  so-called  act  of  will  is  a  product  of  the  past.^ 

Every  form  in  the  natural  order,  says  this  view, 
must  be  a  product  which  cannot  be  other  than 
what  it  is.  The  lifeless  geologic  elements  pro- 
duced at  last  life.  The  unconscious  vegetative  life 
produced  at  last  a  consciousness.  Consciousness 
proved  useful  to  life  and  came  thus  to  be  pre- 
served. Yet  still  there  was  always  an  unknown 
term,  namely,  the  motive  force  which  actuated 
these  lawful  processes.  Again  life  when  it  was 
produced  proved  to  some  extent  incalculable.  The 
germ,  the  spark,  that  which  has  evolved,  that 
which  will  continue  to  evolve,  has  not  been 
wholly  appraised.  For  convenience  it  is  called 
vital  energy. 

So  much  of  the  mechanism  has  been  explained, 
20 


DISILLUSION 

so  much  of  the  organic  law  has  been  harmonized 
with  inorganic  law,  that  the  body  has  come  to 
seem  almost  machine-like  to  the  understanding. 
Some  of  its  component  substances  have  been 
made  in  the  chemical  laboratory.  It  is  all  a  subtle 
combination  of  known  elements.  The  gulf,  to  be 
sure,  between  consciousness  and  objectiveness  is 
inviolable;  but  one  hope  of  science  has  been  to 
attain  a  complete  description  of  every  conscious 
state  in  terms  of  chemistry  and  physics.  Even  the 
sense  of  conscience  is  to  be  expressed  by  the  rela- 
^  tive  position  of  atoms  in  the  brain,  of  their  heat, 
tension,  etc.,  etc.  Enthusiasm  will  be  rated  and 
catalogued. 

Man  is  simply  a  tree  of  nerves.  All  that  can  be 
said  about  intellect,  heart,  and  body  is  repre- 
sented in  this  tree.  The  higher  life,  or  intellectual 
sense  and  feeling,  is  carried  by  nerves  to  which 
others  are  subordinate.  The  brain  is  a  storage- 
room  from  which  impression-carrying  currents 
can  be  renewed  after  the  external  stimuli  have 
ceased.  The  care  of  this  tree  of  nerves  is  to  be 
studied  by  learning  its  composition  and  reactions, 
involving  thus  its  relations  to  the  muscles  and 
bones  which  it  controls,  and  to  the  external  ob- 
jects by  which  it  preserves  itself.  Its  sensations 
are  found  to  have  arisen  for  the  purpose  of  its 
preservation.  The  inferior  nerves,  or  at  any  rate 
the  inferior  sensations,  are  arranged  to  warn  of 
heat  or  cold  which  cannot  be  endured,  to  feel 
for  that  which  is  desired,  to  enable  all  action 

21 


CYCLES    OF    PERSONAL    BELIEF 

which  will  preserve  the  system  or  reproduce  its 
kind. 

The  pleasures  are,  roughly  speaking,  the  guide 
to  its  benefit.  Even  though  the  life  it  leads  has 
become  so  complicated  that  the  pleasures  often 
lead  to  its  destruction,  pleasure  is  nevertheless 
like  an  oscillating  compass  needle  —  a  variable 
from  whose  pointings  we  can  by  reasonable  ob- 
servation and  calculation  discover  what  is  truly 
advantageous. 

The  nervous  energy,  by  proper  care  of  the  tree, 
can  be  husbanded  or  restored.  Then  too,  this 
same  energy  seems  to  be  transformable,  much  as 
currency  is  transformable,  from  copper  to  silver 
or  gold.  The  concentrated  exertion  of  the  mind  is 
equivalent  to  large  quantities  of  bodily  employ- 
ment. The  energy  of  the  mind  is  slowly  accumu- 
lated by  proper  use  of  the  resources  of  the  body. 
The  accounting  and  balance  sheets  of  our  nervous 
energy  are  still  most  difficult  for  the  best  physi- 
cians to  audit.  In  fact  a  difficulty  has  been  en- 
countered in  finding  a  unit  of  value.  But  when 
this  difficulty  is  overcome,  when  the  unit  of  value 
is  found,  all  life  should  come  under  control  of 
the  understanding,  and  every  mystery  should  be 
explained. 

Or,  if  we  look  at  life  subjectively  instead  of 
objectively,  we  should  say  it  is  for  the  quest  of 
the  greatest  amount  of  good  sensations  that  ner- 
vous energy  is  active.  The  perception  of  pleasing 
sensations  leads  the  nerves  to  seek  their  repeti- 

22 


DISILLUSION 

tion,  and  the  continued  opportunity  of  enjoying 
them.  This  governs  in  a  measure  the  direction 
of  the  attention.  Among  the  sensations,  the  at- 
tention picks  and  chooses  that  which  will  give 
the  greatest  pleasure  —  sensations  have  evolved 
something  as  the  forms  and  habits  have  evolved, 
interacting  one  upon  the  other,  by  a  process  sim- 
ilar to,  if  not  identical  with,  natural  selection. 
That  which  was  useful  or  preservative  became 
pleasant.  That  was  sought  and  found  again  and 
again,  and  became  established.  It  was  a  mere 
incident  when  circumstances  changed,  and  what 
had  become  pleasant  was  rendered  detrimental. 

Energy,  however,  influenced  in  this  way,  was 
that  which  lay  at  the  basis  of  all  life,  energy 
obeying  immutable  physical  law  —  energy  run- 
ning in  fatal  periods.  The  tides  rise  and  fall.  The 
moods  run  in  seasons.  We  are  critical  or  believing 
according  to  the  distribution  and  behavior  of  this 
energy  in  the  nerves.  In  a  period  when  we  carry 
a  high  charge  of  this  electrical-seeming  influence 
we  hope  and  believe.  Visions  lure  us.  Belief  in 
the  power  to  control  our  surroundings  arises.  This 
bears  fruit  for  our  good,  indeed,  but  fades  away 
as  the  current  is  spent,  and  the  more  torpid  con- 
ditions prevail.  Then  we  doubt  our  morning 
hopes.  We  realize  the  cold  truth,  and  perceive 
that  our  course  is  determined  by  the  past  from 
now  to  eternity.  There  is  no  need  to  say,  "Best 
take  what  comes";  we  must  take  what  comes. 

The  social  phenomena  must  be  explained  upon 


CYCLES     OF    PERSONAL     BELIEF 

the  same  basis.  Social  virtues  are  simply  the  vehi- 
cle for  the  expression  of  collective  needs;  and  the 
laws  which  men  enact  to  regulate  their  conduct 
and  aifairs  are  simply  a  necessitated  expression, 
part  of  the  tribal  man,  as  the  convolutions  of  its 
shell  are  a  part  of  a  snail. 

In  this  view  all  beliefs,  being  determined  by 
physical  conditions,  would  resemble  electrical  or 
magnetic  phenomena.  Wine,  ether,  disease,  and 
other  known  chemical  or  mechanical  agencies  in- 
duce emotions  of  an  inappropriate  nature,  as 
weeping  spells  when  there  is  nothing  to  weep 
about,  effusions  of  affection  when  there  is  no 
especial  occasion  for  being  demonstrative,  and 
the  like.  So  also  all  states  of  mind  whatsoever 
fall  in  the  physical  series  of  events,  relentlessly 
determined  by  external  law,  and  the  personal  life 
of  the  individual  becomes  a  mere  shadow  per- 
formance. Belief  and  emotion  wither  together 
and  hence  the  flippancy  and  cynicism  of  eras  of 
doubt.  You  can  only  regard  a  belief  as  baseless 
which  you  no  longer  hold ;  and  thus  also  with  an 
emotion,  if  we  suspect  it  has  no  cause  worthy  of 
its  influence  upon  us,  it  has  already  gone.  If  we 
do  not  have  some  belief  in  our  emotions,  they  are 
not  such. 

We  may  have  held  a  fair  ideal  of  living,  asso- 
ciated perhaps  with  the  belief  in  a  kind  and  per- 
sonal God  watching  over  us,  and  ready  to  stretch 
out  a  helping  hand  if  we  try  to  realize  our  ideal. 
Such  notions  must  go  with  the  rest  of  our  positive 

24 


DISILLUSION 

beliefs.   The  world  is  cold  and  hard  and  fashion- 
able. 

It  is  hard  to  find  anything  in  the  mechanistic 
universe  but  cold,  exact  law,  a  material  or  basic 
substance  upon  which  it  works,  and  a  cold,  more 
or  less  imperfect,  reflection  of  these  laws  in  the 
human  brain.  Yet  this  view  of  the  situation  is  not 
conclusive  even  from  an  intellectual  point  of  view. 

The  methods  of  life,  in  the  very  nature  of  the 
case,  preclude  the  possibility  of  discovering  a  com- 
plete correspondence  between  the  subjective  men- 
tal states  and  the  objective  history  of  the  brain. 
I  say  complete  correspondence,  because,  while  it 
is  true  that  for  every  thought  there  may  be  a 
change  in  the  brain,  those  changes  do  not  repre- 
sent the  total  content  of  the  thought.  They  can- 
not tally  with  every  shade  and  quality  in  the 
thought  because  these  depend  upon  non-physical 
elements.  The  attempt  to  find  such  a  correspond- 
ence would  be  like  trying  to  explain  the  law  of 
the  image  which  greets  the  eye  as  one  looks  upon 
a  mirror,  by  a  chemical  analysis  of  the  mercury  on 
the  back.  The  explanation  simply  is  n't  there. 
One  cannot  find  an  explanation  of  thought  by  an 
examination  of  the  brain.  You  can  point  out  a 
number  of  conditions  without  which  there  will  be 
no  thought,  but  you  can  never  point  to  the  cause 
of  a  particular  thought  in  the  structure  of  the 
brain.  You  can,  of  course,  find  a  book  in  a  library, 
you  can  describe  its  physical  position  and  the 

25 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

dynamics  of  the  shelf  which  holds  it  up,  but  you 
cannot  imagine  that  book  to  be  in  the  library  for 
\  any  reason  disassociated  from  the  meaning  of  the 
book  itself. 

It  would  seem,  therefore,  that  the  thought  in 
the  brain  must  be,  to  some  extent  at  least,  consid- 
ered in  its  own  right.  There  is  an  apparent  dis- 
continuity in  the  series  of  physical  causes  in 
which  certain  phases  of  mental  activity  intervene. 
Now  why  should  the  supposition  that  the  inter- 
vention of  non-physical  mental  elements  modifies 
the  physical  world  offend  the  sense  of  propriety 
of  the  mechanistic  philosopher.?  It  offends  him 
because  of  his  faith  in  law;  for  in  reality  he  too 
has  a  faith.  He  reasons  by  the  analogy  of  what  he 
finds  in  the  laboratory.  Law  is  his  infallible  God. 

The  man  who  is  sceptical  about  religion  is  not 
so  sceptical  about  the  version  of  the  laws  which 
he  happens  to  be  studying.  But  the  process  of 
doubt  need  not  stop  anywhere.  What  can  any 
man  prove  about  law  beyond  the  experiments 
which  he  has  performed  himself.'* 

We  should  probably  find  upon  cross-examina- 
tion that  the  most  thoroughgoing  sceptic  uncon- 
sciously treasures  a  hidden  belief.  He  has  a  reser- 
vation in  his  doctrine  which  has  not  been  thor- 
oughly probed.  Moreover,  no  man  is  really  will- 
ing to  consider  his  soul  a  by-product  —  a  sort  of 
aroma  from  off  the  surface  of  facts.  If  the  me- 
chanical theory  were  logically  carried  out,  there 
would  be  no  room  for  the  soul  at  all,  certainly 

26 


DISILLUSION 

none  for  the  will;  and  there  could  be  no  validity 
in  the  feelings.  A  spectator  cannot  feel,  if  he  is 
not  implicated  in  any  way  in  the  plot.  On  the 
part  of  the  mechanistic  philosopher,  disowning  his 
belief  in  himself  is  something  of  an  affectation; 
and  there  is  a  large  element  of  faith  in  his  view  of 
a  law-abiding  material  world. 

It  is  only  here  and  there  in  some  physical  crisis 
that  a  man  doubts  everything.  Yet  each  belief  he 
harbors  may  in  its  turn  be  assailed.  And  as  scep- 
ticism lays  hold  of  us,  we  feel  the  urgent  need  of 
knowing  what,  if  anything,  is  solid  in  life.  In  the 
end  doubt  eats  up  doubt,  but  the  winnowing  of 
beliefs  by  analysis  and  criticism  teaches  us  how 
uncertain  are  the  foundations  of  our  everyday 
knowledge,  how  frail  is  the  structure  which  sup- 
ports our  most  persistent  beliefs. 

One  may  realize  how  slight  is  our  knowledge  of 
material  things  by  reflecting  upon  light.  Conceive 
it  as  a  vibration  of  the  aether,  then  we  must  have 

^  a  definition  of  aether,  as  well  as  a  definition  of 
vibration.  If  we  take  the  simplest  conception  of 
vibration,  it  is  the  motion  of  something  back- 

^  wards  and  forwards.  But  until  that  which  vibrates 
is  defined,  our  definition  of  vibration  must  remain 
incomplete,  for  we  are  dealing  with  two  mutually 
dependent  conceptions.    To  describe  a  vibrating 

^object  we  must  have  geometry  to  deal  with  its 
shape,  and  physical  chemistry  to  deal  with  its 
inner  attributes  and  external  relations.  A  moving 

27 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

atom,  for  instance,  must  be  influenced  in  its 
X  course  by  its  shape,  size,  and  composition,  as  well 
as  by  the  nature  of  the  medium  in  which  it  moves. 
But  the  aether  presumably  is  not  made  up  of  a 
series  of  objects  which  could  be  so  described,  but 
is  itself  the  medium  in  which  objects,  such  as 
atoms,  exist.  If  the  medium  itself  vibrates,  the 
^vibrating  aether  must  be  conceived  as  moving  in 
relation  to  something  other  than  itself,  or  its 
motion  is  meaningless.  Moreover,  the  medium 
must  be  defined  so  as  to  account  for  the  lapse  of 
time  during  the  passage  of  light  through  it.  If  we 
imagine  it  jelly-like  or  elastic,  we  are  merely  call- 
ing in  analogies  which  may  or  may  not  mean 
anything. 

Finally,  if  we  conceive  the  waves  of  light  to  be 
a  series  of  changes  travelling  in  a  continuous  and 
otherwise  uniform  medium,  we  frankly  abandon 
the  attempt  to  describe  the  medium  as  such. 
What  lies  behind  light  and  the  objects  by  which 
it  is  manifested  is  indescribable,  except  as  we 
conjecture  this  or  that  as  a  basis  for  certain 
observed  manifestations.  Indeed,  each  element 
^  of  each  science  if  we  subdivide  far  enough  be- 
comes a  matter  of  conjecture. 

We  perceive  certain  visible  phenomena,  and  in 
seeking  to  find  their  ultimate  nature  we  come 
everywhere  to  some  element  only  to  be  inter- 
preted  by  the  mind.  We  get  along  fairly  well  as 
long  as  we  deal  in  pure  mathematics.  But  the 
application  of  our  mathematics  is  a  convenience, 

28 


DISILLUSION 

not  a  necessity.  Every  mathematic  truth  when 
applied  to  facts  becomes  only  an  approximation. 
Apply  the  mathematical  fact  that  two  plus  two 
equals  four,  to  four  objects.  It  is  simply  directing 
the  attention  toward  a  portion  of  nature,  signaliz- 
ing by  a  convenient  thought  a  part,  which  is  not 

*  made  up  of  four  objects  any  more  essentially 
than  of  billions  of  objects.  The  same  truth  will 
apply  to  any  four  centres  of  attention.  It  is  con- 
venient to  describe  objects  in  this  and  that  way, 
but  it  is  not  essential.  That  is  to  say,  looking  at 
objects  with  a  view  to  determining  their  consti- 

>  tution,  there  is  no  necessity  for  designating  them 
mathematically,  or  as  following  any  particular  law. 
\  Your  law  is  simply  the  habit  of  your  mind  in  de- 
scribing what  you  find  happening  in  the  universe. 
Our  habits  of  mind  throw  us  into  inevitable 
dilemmas.  Returning  to  the  problem  presented 
by  the  aether:  it  is  in  reality  a  question  as  to  the 
nature  of  space.  We  must  choose  between  a 
something  which  is  continuous,  or  a  something 
made  up  of  units,  side  by  side,  but  if  we  choose 
units  we  must  define  in  some  way  what  happens 
when  one  unit  leaves  off  and  another  begins;  and 

s_  furthermore,  we  have  only  driven  the  cat  into 
the  corner,  for  the  space  within  the  extent  of  the 
unit  is  still  to  be  dealt  with;  and  if  we  reach  a  unit 
which  has  no  extent,  an  infinity  of  them  will  fail 
to  describe  space  at  all,  for  they  take  up  none. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  choose  continuity  for  the 
nature  of  space,  it  is  hard  to  see  that  space  has 

29 


CYCLES     OF    PERSONAL     BELIEF 

any  meaning  whatever  apart  from  the  things 
which  occupy  it,  for  if  it  is  continuous  and  self- 
similar,  a  small  amount  of  it  and  a  large  have  no 
essential  difference.  However,  if  space  is  contin- 
uous and  only  describable  by  the  objects  which 
occupy  it,  it  implies  there  is  something  between 
the  substances  which  we  perceive.  Yet  how  could 
this  something  be  continuous  and  still  allow 
bodies  to  pass  through  it? 

With  such  difficulties  the  quest  of  knowledge  is 
beset.  Matter,  or  the  ideas  by  which  matter  is 
interpreted,  alike  leave  us  in  perplexity.  Ideal 
beings,  universal  beings,  or  spiritual  beings,  if 
there  be  such,  cannot  avoid  similar  paradoxes. 
,  What  kind  of  an  existence  has  an  ideal,  the  ideal 
of  universal  happiness  for  instance.'*  Since  there 
is  plenty  of  unhappiness  known  to  us,  universal 
happiness  cannot  now  exist;  but  if  it  does  not 
exist  what  do  we  mean  by  saying  it  is  our  goal.** 
You  may  answer  that  it  exists  in  hope  or  aspira- 
tion, which  means  that  it  is  imaginary.  Is  it  then 
real  or  unreal  ^  If  real,  what  can  reality  mean  in 
this  sense?  If  unreal,  what  good  is  it?  If  unreal, 
what  could  distinguish  it  from  one  wild  revel  of 
unholy  pleasure  lasting  forever?  Is  it  not  as  futile 
to  hope  for  one  as  for  the  other? 

Those  things  which  we  know  are  slight  and  un- 
certain; but  the  attributes  which  the  mind  can 
find  for  that  which  we  do  not  know  are  bewilder- 
ing, and  seem  to  preclude  a  reasonable  theology. 
For  example,  there  are  the  old  problems  of  omni- 

30 


DISILLUSION 

potence  and  omniscience.  If  there  is  a  conscious- 
ness greater  than  the  collective  consciousness  of 
all  animal  life,  the|  consciousness  of  a  power 
which  loves  and  wills,  if  it  is  omnipotent  and  loves 
goodness,  why  is  there  any  evil  in  the  world? 
Again,  if  a  power  is  all-knowing  and  has  no  limit 
to  its  power,  it  cannot  err,  because  unlimited 
power  cannot  do  otherwise  than  choose  the  best, 
if  it  knows  what  the  best  is.  But  we  err,  since  we 
do  not  have  the  best  even  that  we  know.  There- 
fore, those  laws  by  which  we  live  are  not  unalter- 
able, or  else  no  laws  emanate  from  an  all-knowing, 
all-powerful  being. 

If,  moreover,  this  power  is  omniscient  in  respect 
to  the  future,  then  all  future  events  must  be 
predetermined,  and  all  willing,  all  valid,  conscious 
activity  is  a  thing  of  the  past;  your  efforts  are  not 
virtues  of  the  moment,  but  were  arranged  for  you 
beforehand;  and  since  it  is  all  decided,  prayer  is 
valueless.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  our  freedom  is  a 
real  freedom,  God  does  not  know  everything,  for 

^  He  does  not  know  what  any  one  of  us  may  decide 
to  do  in  the  next  moment.  Then  also  there  is 
the  difficulty  of  reconciling  the  absolute  goodness 
of  divinity  with  the  universality  of  divinity.  If 
God  is  in  every  atom,  alike  in  man,  in  rattle- 
snake, and  in  mosquito,  in  filth  and  disease,  while 
at  the  same  time  He  is  the  author  of  the  abhor- 

^  rence  of  evil  within  man.  He  appears  to  be  in  the 
position  of  hating  Himself.  It  is  simply  taking 
the  direct  road  to  absurdity  to  apply  any  particu- 

31 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

larization  whatsoever  to  God.   Similar  difficulties 
cling  to  any  universal  proposition. 

The  world  is  full  of  pests.  For  us  the  sting  of 
the  mosquito  is  a  particular  diabolical  incident. 
Whatever  advantage  in  the  way  of  discipline  may 
come  to  us  from  his  existence,  he  does  not  enter 
into  our  notions  of  a  universal  ideal.  For  us  he  is 
an  objective  evil;  but  he  has  exactly  as  much  right 
to  consider  himself  created  by  God  as  we  have. 
He  carries  on  his  blood-sucking  activities  in  the 
\  same  innocent  spirit  of  good  faith  as  we  our  para- 
sitism upon  cows  and  sheep.  The  same  is  true  of 
lice,  typhoid  fever,  and  the  germs  of  worse  dis- 
eases. It  was  no  demon  who  invented  or  created 
these  things.  There  Is  a  terrible  equality  of  right 
in  the  whole  universe. 

These  considerations,  which  apply  alike  to  con- 
ceptions of  the  world  and  conceptions  of  spiritual 
things,  have  led  to  a  new  method  in  dealing  with 
truth.  There  seems  to  be  no  fixed  criterion  in  the 
universe;  both  matter  and  idea  alike  seem  to 
yield  to  the  sceptical  process  by  virtue  of  the 
inherent  nature  of  reason.  Let  us,  therefore, 
embark  on  our  raft  of  ideas,  and  float  along  as 
far  as  we  can  before  it  breaks  up.  An  idea  is  a 
relative  thing.  Use  it  as  long  as  it  applies  and 
then  try  another.  Idealism  and  materialism  are 
both  true.  One  type  of  mind  finds  one  more  con- 
venient for  its  purposes,  another  the  other.  Each 
is  true  in  its  own  sphere.  In  other  words,  use  is  the 
criterion. 

32 


DISILLUSION 

This  cheery  solution  reminds  one  of  the  award- 
ing of  prizes  by  the  dodo  in  "Alice  in  Wonder- 
land," or  perhaps  of  the  crocodile  who  holding 
the  child  in  his  mouth  bargained  with  the  mother 
by  promising  to  give  back  the  child,  if  she  an- 
^  swered  his  question  right,  and  then  asked,  "Am  I 
going  to  eat  the  child  ? " 

For  the  absolute,  it  is  everything  or  nothing. 
The  subtle  relative  has  won  all  if  the  absolute 
yields  the  most  infinitesimal  mite.  If  we  believe 
in  ideas  at  all,  we  believe  in  them  as  absolute 
criteria.  If  they  are  historical  only,  if  they  exist 
only  by  the  sufferance  of  use,  they  have  lost  their 
inherent  virtue.  They  are  no  longer  tests,  they 
are  checks  and  balances.  They  have  only  the 
authority  of  commentaries  or  annotations  on  the 
living  stream. 

Yet  all  this  while  the  living  stream  is  here,  and 
our  confusion  arises,  not  from  the  depths  of 
existence,  but  from  our  attempts  to  give  an 
account  of  our  existence.  These  are  ultimately 
problems  of  expression.  The  ultimate  goal  of 
analysis  is  to  show  its  own  futility,  except  as  a 
preparation  for  positive  things.  The  vigor  and 
reality  of  the  beliefs  we  once  held  make  us  wish 
them  back  again,  wish  at  least  a  believing  state 
of  mind. 

Truth  is.  It  is  undeniable,  unchangeable,  in- 
evitable. There  is  no  escape  from  it,  and  no  appeal 
from  it.  Other  things  change  for  it  or  yield  to  it. 
It  yields  to  nothing  and  changes  for  nothing.  Our 

33 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

speculations  are  simply  a  quest  for  truth,  and 
having  believed  blindly  and  seen  the  stuff  of  our 
belief  fade  away,  having  doubted  honestly,  and 
found  all  doubting  left  us  »till  living,  we  begin  to 
perceive  once  more  a  genuine  reality  in  the  sur- 
faces of  facts,  and  we  suspect  that  perhaps  they 
mean  something  after  all. 


PART  III 

REILLUSION 


CHAPTER  III 

CONSCIOUSNESS 

The  soul  craves  positive  elements;  and  thought, 
phoenix-like,  begins  perpetually  to  create  new 
beliefs,  to  build,  to  affirm,  and  to  renew  the  world. 
In  the  first  result  of  complete  disillusion  we  are 
left  without  solid  elements  on  which  to  found 
anything;  but  the  thirst  of  the  desert,  the  sense  of 
lack  which  makes  our  doubting  so  potent  and 
revolutionary,  is  but  an  indication  of  the  method 
of  travail,  is  indeed  the  cause  of  our  advance. 

The  fact  that  we  are  alive,  in  so  far  as  life 
involves  consciousness,  is  enough  to  give  us  a 
positive  beginning  for  absolute  truth.  Not  only 
cogito,  ergo  sum,  but  consciousness  and  existence 
are,  in  their  deeper  aspects,  identical:  and  feeling 
or  perception  of  any  sort  is  absolutely  real.  The 
landscape  may  be  taken  as  the  type  of  the  abso- 
lute. When  the  landscape  looks  beautiful,  there  is 
during  the  moment  of  this  appreciation  an  abso- 
lute reality.  But  this  absoluteness  belongs  to  the 
consciousness  which  perceives,  not  to  the  change- 
able outward  appearance  of  nature.  If  I  think, 
I  know  I  think.  What  I  think,  or  what  I  see,  I  may 
not  know;  but  that  I  think,  or  that  I  see,  I  do 
know.  It  is  the  same  with  all  conscious  states; 
what  they  are  we  may  not  know,  but  while  they 
are,  we  know  they  are.   But  since  all  particular 

37 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

consciousness  is  at  the  mercy  of  the  temporal 
transiency  of  the  external  universe,  we  habitu- 
ally ignore  this  absolute  quality  in  the  original 
perceptions. 

Now  reason  lives  at  the  point  where  conscious- 
ness meets  with  truth.  It  is  that  which  marries 
the  soul  to  nature.  It  is  the  necessary  or  divine 
part  of  consciousness,  that  which  cannot  be  other 
than  what  it  is.  Reason  is  itself  a  simple,  un- 
quenchable light.  The  understanding,  however, 
which  is  reason  applied  to  certain  actualities, 
operating  in  the  individual  thinker  to  interpret 
the  external  universe,  and  finding  that  the  natural 
elements  obey  its  own  laws,  tends  to  attribute  a 
greater  permanency  to  the  external  or  objective 
universe  than  to  any  individual  bit  of  conscious- 
ness. The  understanding  thus  indicates  to  the 
individual  that  this  universe  has  a  universal  and 
inevitable  existence  external  to  and  independent 
of  himself,  is  in  fact  an  evolving  natural  system 
from  which  and  by  which  he  himself  was  produced 
—  a  system  in  which  substance  bears  forms  which 
change  according  to  exact,  unalterable  laws.  From 
these  conclusions  came  that  theory  examined  in 
the  previous  chapter,  that  all  consciousness  arose 
from  an  inorganic  or  originally  lifeless  system. 
To  some  minds  this  is  the  ultimate  significance 
of  the  doctrine  of  evolution.  As  opposed  to  this, 
reason  insists  on  the  universal  aspect  of  conscious- 
ness itself. 

It  is  the  consciousness  I  say  which  contains  the 

38 


CONSCIOUSNESS 

absolute,  not  any  particular  group  of  the  objects 
of  consciousness,  no  matter  how  universal  their 
existence  may  appear  to  be. 

To  obtain  further  light  upon  this  truth  let  us 
consider  the  relation  of  consciousness  to  this  sup- 
posed inorganic  earth,  or  rather  let  us  consider 
the  relation  of  the  first  consciousness  in  the  uni- 
verse to  inorganic  matter  in  general.  For  if  the 
consciousness  upon  our  planet  was  not  the  first 
in  the  universe,  then  there  was,  at  the  time  of  the 
dawn  of  consciousness  here,  some  other  conscious- 
ness, the  problem  of  whose  origin  was  the  same 
as  would  be  the  problem  for  us,  had  we  been  the 
first.  Imagine,  then,  the  dawn  of  consciousness  in 
the  universe.  Supposing  there  had  been  abso- 
lutely no  consciousness  whatever  before  the  mo- 
ment it  first  awakes,  or  becomes,  it  is  manifestly 
a  matter  of  indifference  whether  there  has  been 
previous  to  that  moment  a  dead  astronomical  and 
geological  history  for  a  billion  years  or  for  one 
day,  except  in  so  far  as  consciousness  needs  one 
hypothesis  or  the  other  in  order  to  explain  what 
it  has  found  since  awaking.  To  illustrate,  if  the 
first  consciousness  were  seated  in  a  man  who 
awoke  in  a  stalactite  cave,  and  found  that  an 
appreciable  time  had  to  elapse  before  even  a  small 
stalactite  could  be  formed,  and  yet  knew  that  at 
his  birth  many  and  large  stalactites  had  been 
about  him,  he  could  reasonably  conclude  that 
inorganic  processes  had  been  at  work  before  the 
awakening  of  his  own  consciousness. 

39 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

If,  however,  we  imagine  a  universe  totally  de- 
void of  consciousness,  that  is,  if  we  imagine  the 
condition  of  absolute  unconsciousness  throughout 
the  universe  for  all  time,  —  ourselves  and  no 
other  consciousness  ever  having  existed  or  ever 
to  exist,  —  there  is  no  reality  left.  The  universe 
would  be  utterly  dead.  In  such  a  universe  spheres 
may  roll,  may  swing  in  circles  or  jumble  together, 
be  lawless  or  law-abiding,  it  is  all  exactly  the  same. 
If  it  were  all  absolutely  dead  unconsciousness, 
and  relating  to  no  consciousness  past  or  to  come, 
there  could  be  no  distinctions,  no  differences,  no 
identities,  except  the  identity  of  one  dead  nothing- 
ness. Again,  if  we  suppose  the  case  of  conscious- 
ness beginning  at  a  certain  point  in  time,  and  a 
span  of  time  preceding  that  point,  it  is  not  really 
conceivable  that  duration  which  has  no  meaning 
while  it  is  lasting,  but  is  only  to  gain  a  meaning 
later,  with  the  arrival  of  something  new,  should 
have  any  existence  at  all.  Spheres  may  roll,  or 
swing,  or  jumble,  it  is  all  the  same  as  nothingness, 
except  that  consciousness  when  it  comes,  by  a 
retroactive  law,  will  ordain  that  things  were  thus 
and  so.  Or  still  again,  if  we  imagine  the  last  mo- 
ment of  all  life  coming,  and  consciousness  ending 
forever,  again  there  is  an  utter  indifferency  and 
lack  of  meaning  in  all  that  may  follow.  To  think 
otherwise  is  to  objectify  one's  own  ideas  to  such 
an  extent  that  one  cannot  recognize  them  as 
ideas.  It  is  only  with  the  fact  of  a  consciousness 
to  be  born  that  a  lifeless,  unconscious  astronomy 

40 


CONSCIOUSNESS 

begins  to  have  the  possibility  of  reality.  There- 
fore, if  we  imagine  the  first  consciousness  in  the 
universe  resulting  from  some  combination  of 
hitherto  dead  facts,  in  fact  from  any  unconscious 
chemical,  physical,  or  geologic  process  whatso- 
ever, we  have  the  absurd  proposition  that  that 
which  gave  the  combination  its  reality  came  after, 
and  as  a  result  of,  that  which  could  not  be  real 
alone.  Hence,  if  reason  demands  the  admission 
of  a  real  external  universe  preceding  the  dawn  of 
any  particular  consciousness  seated  as  ours  is 
seated  in  animal  life,  it  demands  equally  a  uni- 
versal consciousness  by  virtue  of  which  that  ex- 
ternal universe  exists,  and  a  geologic,  unconscious 
world,  if  it  bears  in  itself  the  seeds  of  life,  must  be 
to  that  greater  consciousness  as  the  egg  to  its 
parent. 

The  imagination  of  mankind  has  loved  to  pic- 
ture "chaos  and  old  night,"  to  fear  the  "outer 
dark."  We  tend  to  imagine  a  dead  origin  even  as 
we  imagine  a  dead  future  for  ourselves.  Now  in 
reality  these  are  simply  projections  of  conscious- 
ness upon  the  wall  of  the  unknown.  There  was  in 
truth  no  such  state  of  nothingness  preceding  our 
own  life. 

Consciousness  Is  primary.  Its  objects  are  sec- 
ondary. Consciousness  governs  its  objects.  But 
this  of  course  does  not  mean  that  consciousness 
can  happen  without  objects.  Expression  is  essen- 
tial. Much  confusion  has  arisen  from  the  attempt 
to  conceive  of  consciousness  without  objects,  or 

41 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

mind  without  experience.  Even  the  "  Critique  of 
Pure  Reason"  bewilders  us  at  times  with  this  very- 
attempt.  Thought  apart  from  experience  is  dis- 
cussed ks  though  the  possibiHty  of  thought  with- 
out experience  were  worth  discussing.  Thought 
is  self-evidently  an  experience.  All  consciousness 
is  a  unity  of  many  aspects  which,  though  referred 
to  separately  for  the  sake  of  clearness,  are  phases 
of  one  whole.  Subjectiveness  involves  objective- 
ness,  but  it  does  not  follow  from  this  that  all  con- 
sciousness is  committed  to  a  particular  series  of 
objects  or  forms  of  expression. 

The  externality  of  phenomena,  the  solidity  of 
solids,  and  all  other  attributes  are  interpretations 
of  the  mind.  How  far  they  are  rooted  in  necessity 
and  hence  absolute  and  independent  of  any  par- 
ticular consciousness,  we  can  judge  only  by  the 
reasonableness  of  the  interpretations,  and  what 
reason  postulates  of  them.  Whichever  road  we 
travel  in  the  interpretation  of  the  material  world, 
we  come  inevitably  back  to  the  consciousness;  for 
if  we  trace  any  fact  to  its  inception  in  our  experi- 
ence, it  brings  us  to  pure  sensations;  or  if  we 
follow  the  analysis  of  the  fact  to  its  constituent 
elements,  we  come  to  mathematical  and  other 
concepts  which  obey  primarily  the  law  of  reason. 
But  this  does  not  mean  that  there  is  no  material 
universe.  It  means  simply  that  the  material  uni- 
verse is  the  field  in  which  or  upon  which  conscious- 
ness operates.        i 

We  may  thus  assert  the  rights  of  absolute  con- 


CONSCIOUSNESS 

sciousness  as  self-evident;  but  the  problematical 
character  which  always  proves  inherent  in  univer- 
sal propositions  haunts  the  questions  which  arise 
in  regard  to  the  relation  of  universal  to  particular 
consciousness.  The  difficulty  is  simply  this.  Man 
perpetually  wonders  what  there  can  be  of  the 
universe  independent  of  his  thought  of  it.  Do 
we  not  give  all  the  facts  the  color  of  our  own 
thoughts  .f*  Will  not  whatever  we  think  be  subject 
^  to  the  peculiar  conditions  of  an  individual  mind.^ 
What  conception  can  we  have  of  what  a  universal 
consciousness  can  be.'*  Our  answer  is  that  one 
peculiarity  of  the  individual  consciousness  is  the 
positive  affirmation  of  universals.  It  may  be 
difficult  to  distinguish  between  our  particular 
notions  and  our  universal  judgments;  but  our 
reason  nevertheless  clearly  affirms  that  such  a 
distinction  exists. 

The  mind,  moreover,  unhesitatingly  postulates 
universality  of  material  elements.  It  is  the  result 
of  a  drowsiness  when  the  mind  fails  to  postulate 
the  same  universality  of  itself.  The  body  is  taken 
up  out  of  the  perpetual  cycles  of  earthly  substance, 
and  held  in  the  human  form  for  the  lifetime  of  a 
man.  So  also  the  individual  consciousness  arises 
from  a  deeper  consciousness,  and  must  attribute 
its  existence  to  the  parental  existence  of  that 
greater  self. 

We  are  led  then  to  explore  the  universal  ele- 
ments of  our  own  particular  minds.  Now  the 
process  of  thought  does  not  naturally  proceed  by 

43 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

formulas.  To  systematize  in  some  fields,  even 
were  it  possible,  would  be  undesirable.  In  others 
we  may,  for  the  sake  of  letting  light  into  the  mind, 
adopt,  as  in  geometry,  this  stepping-stone  method. 
But  the  poetic  or  deeper  truths  have  always  come 
as  fragments;  we  must  take  them  and  be  thankful 
for  them,  trusting  that  the  cumulative  intellectual 
effort  of  mankind  will  gradually  outline  and  por- 
tray the  great  unity  of  truth. 

Meanwhile  each  of  us  sees  some  few  aspects  as 
more  fundamental  than  others.  These  he  wishes 
to  emphasize.  Beginning  then  with  the  most 
general  data  which  the  reason  presents  there  are 
certain  axiomatic  propositions  of  consciousness 
back  of  which  we  cannot  go. 

AXIOMATIC   PROPOSITIONS 

1.  Good  is  the  most  primary  of  all  things.  It 
is  the  test  of  everything  else. 

2.  I,  an  individual  consciousness,  a  being  which 
lives,  must  be  recognized  in  the  expression  of 
that  which  is. 

Note,  The  soul  is  the  universal  part  of  self. 
I  and  the  soul  are  identical  or  not  according 
to  my  purity  or  impurity. 

3.  The  soul  loves  good.  Love  is  the  soul's  atti- 
tude toward  the  good. 

4.  Happiness  is  an  aspect  of  the  good.  Happi- 
ness applies  to  consciousness  and  attends  the 
soul's  attitude  of  love.  Whatever  is  good 
must  be  happy  or  it  is  not  really  good;  what- 

44 


AXIOMATIC    PROPOSITIONS 

ever  is  happy  must  be  good  or  it  is  not  really 
happy. 

5.  Truth  is  an  aspect  of  the  good.  Truth  ap- 
plies to  objects.  Whatever  is  good  is  true, 
whatever  is  true  is  good. 

Note,  Whenever  we  speak  of  happiness 
objectively  we  mean  such  as  produces  hap- 
piness in  the  consciousness  concerned  with 
this  object.  Whenever  we  speak  of  truth 
subjectively  we  mean  such  consciousness  as 
is  concerned  with  true  objects. 

6.  These  are  the  fundamentals  of  life,  but  life 
/      itself  is  undefinable  because  of  its  infinity. 

7.  Life  demands  that  consciousness  have  ob- 
jects, that  goodness  must  be  exemplified. 

8.  Life  when  particularized,  i.e.,  immersed  in 
time  and  space,  is  loving  the  exemplifica- 
tions of  goodness. 

9.  Love  is  in  itself  and  always  the  direct  ex- 
emplification of  happiness.  Gladness,  rap- 
ture, and  ecstasy  are  particular  phases. 

10.  Truth  finds  exemplification  by  expression. 

11.  Mind  is  the  faculty  of  consciousness  which 
reasons  or  uses  reason. 

12.  The  language  of  reason  is  ideas.   These  are 
the  component  parts  of  truth. 

In  practice  our  expressions  seem  far  away  from 
the  absolute  truth.  However  we  strive  the  actu- 
ality of  ideas  remains  remote,  or  dim  to  each  par- 
ticular consciousness.    It  is  hard  to  believe  that 

4S 


CYCLES    OF     PERSONAL    BELIEF 

they  are  real  and  burning  now.  Rarely  we  see 
dazzling  flashes  that  convince  us.  Propositions 
couched  in  words  are  crude  approximations  to 
our  thoughts.  Thoughts  in  turn  are  faint  and 
shadowy  replicas  of  ideas.  If  you  seek  to  analyze 
these  fundamental  concepts,  they  die.  They  are 
like  the  popular  notion  of  an  idea,  a  shifting 
mental  phenomenon.  Yet  these  copies  which  we 
have  are  all  the  language  we  possess  for  the  defini- 
tion of  our  existence. 

We  may  make  these  further  definitions.  Life, 
involved  as  it  must  be  in  exemplifications,  is 
experience.  Action  is  the  result  of  the  love  of  the 
good  in  the  conscious  individual,  and  the  dynamic 
force  thus  individualized  and  working  in  particu- 
lar instances  is  will.  Experience  is  the  history  of 
will.  The  actual  is  the  result  of  the  will's  actions. 
Facts  are  isolated  instances  of  the  continuous 
actual.  Sensation  is  the  crude  original  substratum 
of  consciousness  out  of  which  the  facts  are  quar- 
ried by  the  attention.  Facts  may  or  may  not  be 
built  into  structures,  may  or  may  not  be  inter- 
preted by  ideas.  But  sensation  or  some  awareness 
of  objects  is  always  present  in  the  waking  condi- 
tion, and  thought  presupposes  elements  which 
tide  the  individual  between  any  particular  cogni- 
tions or  reasonings.  When  the  mind  is  awake,  the 
soul  loves  the  good  by  necessity.  Faith  is  the  pre- 
servation of  the  attitude  of  love  when  we  are  not 
directly  conscious  of  mind.  It  is  a  spiritual  mo- 
mentum. When  the  mind  is  awake  the  perception 

46 


AXIOMATIC    PROPOSITIONS 

of  truth  leads  the  individual  will  into  actions  pro- 
ductive of  good.  Right  feeling  attends  such  ac- 
tions. Conscience  is  the  result  of  faith  bridging 
from  one  right  feeling  to  another. 

-  These  propositions  and  definitions  are  imper- 
sonal as  is  all  general  truth.  Yet  as  knowledge 
such  general  truth  is  accessible  to  each  individual 
consciousness. 

But  we  must  clearly  recognize  the  limitations 
of  our  personal  thought,  which,  even  while  it 
recognizes  the  necessity  of  such  propositions,  is 
unable  to  explain  fully  their  relationship  to  itself. 
Analysis  shows  plainly  enough  that  our  under- 
standing is  unable  to  cope  with  universals.  Any 
idea  or  conception  of  goodness  which  we  may  con- 
template loses  itself  behind  a  veil  of  particular 
imperfections  and  tragedy.  It  seems  inevitably 
to  become  a  non-existent  goal,  a  production  of  the 
imagination,  an  object  only  of  hope. 

This,  however,  should  not  lead  to  negative 
results,  but  rather  throw  us  into  communion  with 
the  diverse  aspects  of  existence.  It  is  hard,  indeed, 
to  understand  how  there  can  be  consciousness 
of  a  permanent,  unchanging  idea,  for  how  could 
such  a  consciousness  last?  It  is  hard  to  conceive 
of  any  consciousness  independent  of  the  striving 
individuals  of  this  or  some  other  world.  Strife 
seems  essential  to  wakefulness.  The  friction  of 
multiplicity  seems  to  characterize  existence.  Yet 
a  consciousness  which  was  simply  the  aggregate 
of  many  individuals  would  not  account  for  the 

47 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL    BELIEF 

absolute  reliability  of  ideas.  Nor  can  we  dismiss 
our  instinct  to  believe  in  an  ultimate,  real,  un- 
clouded happiness  —  a  union  with  an  actual 
divinity. 

The  truth  is  we  do  not  understand  infinity;  the 
elements  of  thought  which  discount  time  inevit- 
ably perplex  us.  The  past  itself  is  strangely  quick ; 
the  objects  of  hope  are  most  assuredly  real.  And 
the  imagination  deals  with  something  which  is 
incomprehensibly  actual.  So  also  our  dreams, 
with  their  mysterious  comings  and  goings,  their 
vanishing  existence,  and  all  the  wayward,  sub- 
conscious influences  of  our  life  as  well,  must  have 
some  place  in  the  scheme  of  reality,  must  exem- 
plify some  type  of  being.  Universals  do  not  con- 
form to  temporal  limitations  and  we  must  remem- 
ber that  we  have  not  got  to  conceive  of  a  universal 
soul  in  order  that  it  should  exist. 

What  we  call  our  ideas  are  not  original,  but 
take  their  actuality  from  a  more  fundamental 
source  than  our  particular  experience.  The  truth 
overarches  us  like  the  sky, while  our  thoughts  flow 
along  beneath,  taking  its  color,  and  affecting  it  as 
little  as  a  brook  aff"ects  the  stars  which  are  bro- 
kenly reflected  therefrom.  We  are  transient,  the 
ideal  is  not.  The  permanence  and  stability  of  that 
which  leads  the  soul  to  love  has  more  right  to  be 
called  real  than  we  have.  The  existence  of  that 
without  which  our  life  would  be  meaningless  is 
more  sure  than  our  own.  It  is  by  virtue  of  the 
reality  of  an  idea  that  we  know  anything.    It  is 

48 


THE    WILL 

by  virtue  of  the  universal  nature  that  we  are  in 
essence  superior  to  time,  absolute  even  in  our 
seeming  transiency. 

THE  will:  good  and  evil 

At  the  basis  of  thought  lies  a  distinction  be- 
tween Necessity  and  Fate,  and  this  distinction 
corresponds  with  the  distinction  between  Love 
and  Will.  All  the  absolute  necessities  are  rooted 
in  Love.  All  the  fatal  elements  of  life  are  the 
result  of  Will.  The  necessities  are  expressed  by 
ideas;  the  fatalities  by  events. 
.  The  inner  life  of  consciousness,  its  germ  and 
kernel,  is  love.  Love  implies  motive  force.  The 
attitude  of  the  loving  soul  in  itself  creates  motion, 
and  in  our  particular  history  where  consciousness 
is  centred  in  the  individual  self,  the  life  which 
love  generates  is  the  life  of  will. 

The  fundamental  problem  of  the  will  is  the 
problem  of  Good  and  Evil.  Now,  of  course,  good- 
ness is  far  beyond  the  reach  of  formulas  and 
propositions.  Its  nature  is  but  dimly  suggested 
by  metaphysical  considerations.  Its  portrait  can 
scarcely  be  begun  until  we  come  upon  the  thresh- 
old of  the  beautiful.  Our  hints  and  presentiments 
of  true  goodness  are  almost  too  precious  to  name. 
Nature  seems  so  indifferent  at  times,  so  empty  of 
the  spirit  of  life;  and  yet  here  on  this  little  world, 
with  its  innumerable  series  of  natural  processes, 
culminating  in  the  struggles  of  humanity,  is  our 
only  portal  to  the  Temple. 

49 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

Reason  finds  goodness  at  war  with  its  opposite, 
evil;  finds  thus  an  inevitable  and  universal  con- 
flict at  the  heart  of  life.  The  conflict  is  in  itself  an 
evil  or  at  least  a  half  good.  Are  we  not  cast, 
therefore,  into  utter  confusion,  as  we  attempt  the 
quest  of  a  pure  and  absolute  good  ? 

Let  us  further  estimate  the  nature  of  this  prob- 
lem. The  will  is  the  child  of  love.  It  is  the  crea- 
tive impulse  individualized.  But  consciousness 
itself  appears  to  depend  for  its  existence  upon  the 
will.  For  if  there  were  nothing  for  consciousness 
to  act  upon,  there  would  be  no  cause  of  motion 
or  change.  If  there  were  no  motion  or  change,  our 
awareness  of  objects  would  die  out,  as  happens 
in  sleep.  It  follows  that  the  conflict  which  love 
produces  against  inertia,  evil,  difficulty,  and  all 
other  negatives  is  an  essential  character  of  con- 
sciousness. The  strife  toward  beauty  and  right 
is  life.  If,  however,  there  is  in  consciousness  an 
essential  conflict,  if  a  structural  component  of 
existence  is  evil,  and  the  contradiction  between 
positive  and  negative  a  sine  qua  non  of  our  living, 
has  not  the  pessimist  a  metaphysical  basis  foi* 
his  despondency  which  cannot  be  gainsaid  1  And 
is  not  the  cheerfulness  and  exhilaration  with 
which  the  robust  heart  greets  the  vision  of  truth 
but  the  dream  of  a  fool's  paradise? 

Philosophers  who  penetrate  into  this  problem 
too  often  fall  into  despondency.  Much  of  the 
philosophic  thought  which  has  deeply  influenced 
our  era  has  been  tinged  with  a  profound  gloom. 

SO 


THE    WILL 

The  pessimist  has  an  inveterate  habit  of  saying 
to  the  optimist,  "You  have  not  known."  If  any 
one  asserts  that  evil  is  not  essential,  or  describes 
a  particular  terror,  a  pain,  a  fear,  a  sin  with  any 
mitigation  of  the  characteristic  features  which  its 
victim  attributes  to  it,  he  is  set  down  as  a  trifler. 
It  is  idle  and  useless  to  deny  a  terrible  reality  to 
evil,  or  to  fail  to  see  an  inexorable  necessity  in 
conflict. 

In  answer  to  these  difficulties,  we  must  keep 
one  great  distinction  always  in  view.  It  has 
already  been  noted  that  the  nature  of  existence 
and  reality  is  not  simple;  but  rather  there  are 
difl'erent  kinds  of  being.  There  are  the  absolute 
positive  realities  with  which  love  deals,  and  there 
is,  on  th^  other  hand,  the  wilFs  particular  history. 
We  cannot  understand  absolute  good,  but  we 
need  not  confuse  our  inability  to  portray  it,  with 
the  particular  problem  of  the  will's  struggle  with 
existing  evil.  The  negatives,  evil,  difiiculty,  and 
the  rest,  have  a  kind  of  existence.  Evil  must  be 
dealt  with.  It  is  real  in  that  sense.  In  our  concrete 
life,  in  our  experience,  it  is  a  real  factor  with  the 
same  kind  of  absoluteness  that  the  landscape 
possesses,  but  it  is  not  real  in  the  sense  in  which 
an  idea  is  real.  It  is  not  positive,  it  is  not  irre- 
sistible, it  is  not  permanent.  Goodness,  I  say,  is 
positive;  evil  is  negative.  Goodness  by  its  mani- 
fest, self-evident  nature  cannot  die  leaving  evil  in 
the  universe.  For  to  think  of  such  a  thing  reveals 
to  us  instantly  that  goodness  which  could  so  die 

SI 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

would  be  inferior  to  what  we  recognize  would  be 
good.  It  was  Plato's  profound  argument  that 
goodness  is  self-productive,  while  evil  is  self- 
destructive.  Goodness  here  strengthens  goodness 
there.  Goodness  in  particular  furthers  goodness 
in  general.  But  the  more  evil  the  weaker  evil 
becomes;  for  when  evils  are  tenacious,  when  there 
is  honor  among  thieves,  evil  has  borrowed  a  virtue 
from  goodness.  In  reality  evil  is  the  enemy  of 
evil  as  well  as  the  enemy  of  good.  There  would,  of 
course,  be  no  reason  for  existence  if  there  was  no 
goodness  and  no  hope  of  goodness  in  the  universe. 
Then  again,  whenever  unhappiness  increases,  the 
reason  for  existence  grows  less  and  less,  while 
whenever  happiness  increases,  the  reason  for 
existence  grows  stronger  and  stronger;  hence  the 
power  of  happiness  has  a  cumulative  strength, 
while  the  power  of  evil  grows  by  its  own  effects 
weaker  and  weaker. 

The  type  of  existence  which  belongs  to  evil  is 
more  the  nature  of  a  dream  existence,  its  essence 
is  transiency;  but  the  existence  of  goodness  is  of 
the  nature  of  a  waking  reality.  Yet  the  most 
profound,  insistent  illusion  clings  to  our  conscious- 
ness, namely,  that  goodness  and  its  expressive 
ideals  are  transient,  while  evil  and  its  weighty 
inertias  are  solid,  inevitable  realities. 

The  whole  essence  of  intellectual  progress  is 
the  banishing  of  this  illusion;  the  realization  of 
the  waking  actuality  of  eternal  truth.  This  is  the 
only  way  to  overcome  the  influence  of  the  major 

52 


THE    WILL 

evils  of  life.  How  great  the  difficulty  of  this  prog- 
ress is,  is  made  known  to  us  whenever  we  suffer 
or  see  suffering.  In  the  struggle  of  human  life  the 
passions  flare  up.  Your  life  and  mine  burn  more 
brightly  in  the  swirling  currents  of  pain  and  diffi- 
culty. The  consciousness  glows  more  and  more 
fiercely  as  the  passions  are  thwarted.  Again  and 
again  we  ask,  Is  not  life  one  with  this  elemental 
struggle  by  which  alone  we  seem  to  express  our- 
selves f  It  takes  a  high  kind  of  courage  to  believe 
that  evil  is  only  imaginary. 

Always  we  must  recur  to  that  distinction  be- 
tween the  universal  and  the  particular  which 
permeates  the  smallest  elements  of  our  life.  The 
universal  part,  or  the  soul  of  man,  escapes  the 
limitations  of  the  particular  will  and  ever  main- 
tains its  unity  with  the  deeper  self.  But  the 
particular  will  must  encounter  evil,  face  it  and 
conquer  it.  Life  as  we  live  it  is  made  up  of  this 
paradox.  The  self  as  we  know  it  combines  these 
seemingly  irreconcilable  elements. 

The  relation  which  exists  between  good  and 
evil  has  no  meaning  without  progress.  All  pains 
are  growing-pains.  The  necessity  of  goodness 
casts  a  phantom  reality  upon  evil.  Goodness 
gets  its  body  and  weight  from  evil,  but  evil  exists 
for  no  other  purpose.  If  goodness  derives  a  value 
from  evil,  this  value  is  only  a  value  in  the  over- 
coming of  evil.  Creating  an  absence  of  evil,  its 
abnegation  and  denial  is  the  method  of  success. 
Evil  is  convertible  into  something  not  evil.   The 

53 


CYCLES     OF    PERSONAL    BELIEF 

nature  of  progress  is  to  make  that  which  appar- 
ently had  a  solid  reality  unreal;  to  cause  an  evil, 
which  had  been  given  rank  among  the  fixed  fac- 
tors of  life,  to  become  as  if  it  had  never  existed. 
Evil  is  a  preliminary,  and  so  far  as  we  can  under- 
stand as  we  look  up  and  down  the  stairway  of 
progress,  evil  is  simply  the  name  of  the  pull  to- 
ward a  direction  which  leads  to  nothingness,  while 
goodness  is  the  creative  push  which  carries  us  in 
the  direction  leading  to  greater  and  greater  degrees 
of  existence. 

THE  will:  necessity  and  fate 

The  fundamental  agency  within  us  is  the  will. 
The  feeling  that  you  are  free  to  decide  between 
two  alternatives  is  your  sacred  and  inviolable 
right,  and  the  content  or  meaning  of  that  feeling 
is  real.  Each  decision  is  not  determined  by  the 
past.  It  is  a  creative  act.  The  facts,  the  events 
of  the  world,  stream  away  from  this  core  of  exist- 
ence in  all  directions.  Your  fate  is  built  upon 
your  past  decisions,  or  we  may  say,  fate  exists 
only  in  so  far  as  we  have  already  decided. 

Now  the  wolf  or  the  child  never  doubts  the 
validity  of  his  native  will.  It  is  only  after  the 
sceptical  method  of  thinking  has  torn  up  our  be- 
liefs that  we  become  conscious  of  any  problem  of 
free  will.  The  normal  attitude  of  mind  is  to  be- 
lieve entirely  in  our  right  of  choice.  At  first  sight 
we  find  the  results  of  simple  decisions  are  clear. 
We  modify  nature  by  our  activity,  we  chop  down 

54 


THE    WILL 

a  tree,  set  waves  In  motion  by  throwing  a  stone 
into  a  pond,  build  a  road,  or  burn  a  forest. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  man  is  an  utterly  impo- 
tent spectator  in  the  presence  of  a  thunderstorm. 
Supposing  for  the  sake  of  illustration  that  the 
will's  activity  as  it  affects  objects  is  wholly  neces- 
sitated, its  freedom  of  choice  purely  illusory,  that 
our  whole  physical  life  in  nature  with  all  our 
motions  is  part  of  a  series  governed  rigidly  by 
natural  laws,  there  is  still  opportunity  for  choice 
in  our  response  to  these  laws,  and  what  they  bring 
forth.  If  my  house  is  struck  by  lightning  it  rests 
with  me  whether  to  be  cheerful  or  despondent.  So 
also  if  I  become  ill,  I  may  be  patient  or  angry 
according  to  my  choice.  In  this  view  our  will  may 
be  acting  while  the  stuff  upon  which  it  acts  is 
wholly  unmodified  by  it.  Thus  the  response  of 
the  conscious  self  to  the  natural  processes  can  be 
like  the  audience  at  a  concert  which  may  subjec- 
tively interpret  what  it  likes  from  the  music, 
without  influencing  the  programme.  But  this 
meagre  appraisal  of  the  power  of  the  will,  this 
feeling  that  the  will  has  no  relation  to  the  power 
that  chose  the  programme,  is  really  irrational. 
To  imagine  a  complete  insulation  between  the 
interpreting  will  and  the  natural  facts  requires  a 
stretch  of  the  imagination  quite  unwarranted. 
An  interaction  must  exist  between  the  conscious 
response  to  the  natural  facts  and  the  facts  them- 
selves. The  notion  of  a  purely  spectator  con- 
sciousness imagining  itself  to  be  making  effective 

55 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

decisions,  when  it  is  not  doing  so,  is  nonsense. 
Therefore  this  interaction  is  not  mechanically- 
automatic,  but  consciousness  gives  something 
with  its  response;  and  if  the  will  modifies  na- 
ture at  all,  it  must  be  in  itself  a  spontaneous 
cause. 

Choice  has  been  at  work  like  the  madrepores  of 
the  coral  reef,  building,  building,  building  the 
solid  structure  of  circumstances.  That  is  to  say, 
circumstance  is  the  accumulation  of  past  decisions, 
for  every  petty  decision  assumes  the  character  of 
an  unalterable  fatal  element  in  the  past.  It  is 
thus  also  that  innumerable  little  decisions  make 
the  character;  innumerable  little  decisions  print- 
ing themselves  either  in  the  material  structure  of 
the  individual  or  in  the  external  structure  of  the 
world.  Indeed,  circumstance  is  but  the  imprint 
of  character  on  various  forms  of  inertia.  Yet, 
when  we  reflect  upon  the  momentum  of  habit, 
the  onward  sweep  of  events  already  set  under  way, 
the  encircling  influence  of  tribal  or  national  deci- 
sions which  surround  us  and  shape  our  destiny, 
to  doubt  the  efficacy  of  our  own  choice  seems  more 
natural  than  to  believe  in  it.  For  once  the  decid- 
ing impulse  has  cooled,  and  in  the  world  there  lies 
behind  us  the  series  of  irrevocable  facts,  the  mind 
tends  to  doubt  its  own  power.  There  comes  a 
paralysis  from  the  written  record  of  what  we 
have  done,  a  borrowing  from  ideas  belonging  to 
the  past  to  lend  terror  to  the  future.  Moreover, 
subtle  necessities  brood  over  the  will,  at  first  little 

56 


THE    WILL 

recognized,  but  later  seen  to  unite  each  little  life 
with  the  processes  of  the  ages. 

Back  through  the  generations  extends  the 
series  of  choice-wrought  fatalities.  We  can  trace 
the  origins  of  man's  condition  in  individual  or 
racial  choices  as  far  back  as  history  goes.  One 
series  of  choices  produced  the  lion,  one  the  wolf, 
and  one  the  man.  The  circumstances  have  vary- 
ing histories,  some  old,  some  new.  We  are  en- 
thralled among  customs  of  greater  or  less  strength. 
To  ascertain  their  rights  and  enduring  power  is 
an  endless  enquiry.  They  constitute  alike  the 
resistance  to  our  progress  and  the  field  in  which 
the  struggle  of  the  will  takes  place.  But  in  search- 
ing for  the  origins  we  come  in  the  end  to  a  border- 
land where  decisions  cannot  properly  be  called 
such,  and  our  development  rested  upon  instinct. 
It  is  true  we  can  see  the  process  going  on  about  us 
of  decisions  crystallizing  into  instincts,  and  per- 
haps most  of  what  we  call  instincts  are  decisions 
which  crystallized  at  a  more  remote  date. 

But  the  consideration  of  instincts  brings  us 
directly  to  the  problem  of  vegetative  life.  Here 
the  plants  have  been  hemming  us  in,  growing  and 
developing  parallel  with  animals.  The  plants 
have  a  life  as  a  cause,  back  of  their  complex  net- 
work of  limitations  just  as  we  have  life;  but  inas- 
much as  they  are  unconscious  we  cannot  imagine 
them  as  having  by  an  infinite  progression  of  deci- 
sions shaped  their  histories.  On  the  contrary,  we 
consider  them  the  result  of  unvarying,  impersonal 

57 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

laws.  Thus  their  fate  was  identical  with  necessity, 
and  took  shape  in  law.  Similarly  our  instincts 
and  much  of  what  we  superficially  take  to  be  our 
decisions  are  so  saturated  with  necessity  that  the 
will  is  unrecognizable.  Indeed,  the  vegetative 
part  of  our  own  development  seems  to  be  gov- 
erned by  the  same  laws  as  that  of  the  plants.  The 
instincts  evolved  in  harmony  with  these.  Thus 
biological  analysis  appears  to  invalidate  the  series 
of  our  decisions.  The  discovery  that  a  large  por- 
tion of  our  activities  could  not  be  other  than  what 
they  are  for  mechanical  reasons,  suggests  anew 
that  all  seemingly  wilful  acts  are  illusory  and  that 
the  mechanistic  philosophy  is  right  after  all. 

Yet  the  will  in  its  operation  in  everyday  life  is 
absolutely  real.  If  we  wish  to  lift  a  stone  we  may 
lift  a  stone.  There  is  no  absolutely  determining 
factor  before  the  choice  is  made.  The  biological 
interpretations  must  adjust  themselves  as  best 
they  can  to  this  primitive  truth. 

The  vegetative  law  nevertheless  penetrates 
deep  into  our  inner  nature.  The  study  of  heredity 
has  shown  how  limited  in  many  directions  is  the 
sphere  of  our  personal  choice.  Here,  however,  we 
must  be  careful  to  distinguish  between  the  bio- 
logical heredity  which  is  a  matter  of  physical  law, 
and  philosophic,  or  practical  heredity.  It  does 
not  matter  to  the  parent  whether  the  child  inher- 
its a  love  of  the  sea  through  germ-plasm  or  through 
his  environment.  In  the  philosophic  sense  every- 
thing is  heredity  —  the  physical  environment  is 

58 


THE    WILL 

simply  its  outer  fringes.  The  yearnings,  aspira- 
tions, and  efforts  of  the  parent  constitute  a  series 
of  factors  bearing  upon  the  future  life  of  the  par- 
ents, and  upon  the  fate  of  the  children.  The 
biologist  must  tell  us  whether  or  not  any  of  these 
factors  are  lodged  within  his  precincts.  He  seeks 
to  discover  how  much  or  how  little  the  stream  of 
conscious  influences  has  passed  into  the  physically 
transmitting  medium.  But  the  factors  as  mani- 
festations of  will  are  a  real  part  of  life,  indeed,  the 
most  real  part  of  life,  no  matter  what  the  student 
of  heredity  reports. 

The  tendency  of  recent  research  has  been  to 
find  variations  in  off"spring  somewhat  aloof  from, 
and  independent  of,  specific  influences  in  the  life 
of  the  parent:  variations  launched  out  of  the  in- 
finite, but  whose  behavior  once  launched  follows 
vegetative  laws,  the  law  of  Mendel  and  the  like, 
rather  than  personal  influences.  Let  this  teach 
us  that  we  have  not  been  trusted  by  the  universal 
will  so  far  as  we  had  begun  to  suppose.  And  yet 
the  individual  and  collective  will  of  man  and 
animals  has  an  activity  parallel  to  all  vegetative 
evolution,  and  the  total  effects  of  this  activity 
are  never  adequately  gauged  or  known.  If  we 
again  consider  the  illustration  of  the  concert  and 
its  audience,  we  shall  find  that  the  relation  of  the 
conductor  to  the  performance,  the  conductor  who 
leads  the  musicians  but  does  not  produce  the 
music,  more  fitly  than  the  audience,  represents 
the  relation  between  the  will  and  the  natural  facts. 

59 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

The  vegetative  laws,  the  laws  of  Mendel  and 
all  that  biology  can  disclose  are  no  more  and  no 
less  formidable  than  the  laws  of  thunderstorms,  of 
astronomy,  or  the  laws  of  the  universe.  The 
problem  comes  to  this,  what  is  the  relation  of  our 
volition  to  necessity?  Necessity  alone  is  utterly 
inexorable.  But  as  we  attempt  to  further  appre- 
hend what  we  mean  by  this,  we  find  that  our 
whole  knowledge  of  necessity  arises  from  the 
character  of  the  mind.  Necessity  is  the  unalter- 
able basis  of  thought.  The  biologist,  in  order  to 
describe  the  limitations  which  law  imposed  upon 
life,  comes  at  length  to  mathematical  truth. 

We  are  governed  primarily  by  ideal  necessities. 
It  was  by  the  constant  application  of  unchallenge- 
able ideas  that  the  biologist  as  well  as  the  physi- 
cist and  chemist  made  progress  toward  expressing 
the  natural  laws.  The  study  of  heredity  teaches 
that  the  germ-plasm  reflects  the  laws  of  the  uni- 
verse more  directly,  and  the  personal  influences 
more  obscurely  than  we  previously  believed.  The 
personal  influence,  the  more  recent  changes  in  the 
nature  of  each  animal  are  more  outwardly  re- 
flected in  the  offspring;  and  the  characters  "in 
the  blood"  are  of  more  ancient,  if  not  of  quite 
impersonal,  origin. 

The  biological  problem  is  of  the  utmost  prac- 
tical significance,  for  it  concerns  us  deeply  to 
know  in  what  part  of  the  environment,  seen  or 
unseen,  is  seated  the  result  of  our  own  particular 
push :  in  what  direction  from  the  encircling  physi- 

60 


THE    WILL 

cal  medium  is  the  reaction  which  shall  affect  our 
children  to  come  from.  But  the  will  has  inner 
laws  of  its  own  which  are  equally  practical.  The 
whole  life  of  the  parent  is  radiating  influences 
into  the  universe,  and  these  are  charged  with  a 
spiritual  magnetism  which  we  may  trust  to  carry 
them  where  they  belong.  The  deeper  problem  is 
metaphysical. 

Necessity  in  its  operation  is  law.  A  part  of 
necessity  is  the  existence  of  will.  The  will  is 
necessitated  to  act,  but  the  essence  of  its  activity 
IS  to  exercise  a  real  choice.  This  makes  it  valid 
and  creative.  A  little  reflection  will  show  that 
since  the  will  is  a  spontaneous  cause  in  each  case 
where  it  acts  and  modifies  nature,  it  has  the  same 
kind  of  power  as  the  laws  themselves.  The  two 
act  jointly  in  producing  results.  It  is  thus  that 
Divinity,  which  is  the  author  of  necessity,  reaches 
even  to  the  heart  of  particular  or  individual  life. 

It  follows  from  this  that  necessity  leaves  a 
scope  for  that  which  is  not  necessary.  The  present 
is  the  home  of  freedom.  As  soon  as  a  decision  is 
past  it  freezes.  Our  fatal  activities,  free  while 
they  last,  receive  the  clamp  of  necessity  as  they 
end.  The  past  is  all  inexorable.  But  the  past  as 
we  know  it  is  alive,  for  we  know  it  only  through 
the  present,  in  which  we  remember  or  forget.  The 
past  is  taken  up  into  the  present  by  the  potency  of 
our  freedom.  Among  the  laws  we  still  pursue  an 
illimitable  happiness:  not  by  struggling  against 

6i 


CYCLESJ   OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

the  unalterable,  but  by  greater  and  greater  degrees 
of  obedience. 

Divinity  itself  cannot  change  the  necessities. 
These  simply  are.  The  will  cannot  change  the 
factors  of  life  emanating  directly  therefrom.  The 
soul  cannot  will  unhappiness.  It  cannot  prefer 
evil  to  good,  nor  will  unreasonable  things.  If  we 
think  otherwise  the  particular  self  has  fallen 
among  errors  and  confusions.  But  there  is  a  uni- 
versal will  which  influences  our  own  particular 
choices,  but  is  not  influenced  by  them,  a  will 
which  wills  only  good,  which  is  errorless,  and  in 
one  sense  omnipotent,  that  is,  that  in  its  sphere 
is  irresistible;  so  that  when  we  understand  its 
tendency  —  the  tendency  toward  real  goodness 
—  we  become  successful.  On  the  other  hand,  we 
must  recognize  that  the  incarnation  of  self  is  far 
from  complete  in  its  identification  with  this  uni- 
versal will.  The  particular  self  wishes,  desires, 
chooses  unreasonably,  and  creates  a  strange 
particular  history  resulting  now  in  pain  and  dis- 
tress, now  in  solaces  and  pleasures. 

The  parent  or  universal  will  is  the  spirit  of  love. 
Love  is  in  its  nature  universal.  Particular  acts  of 
will  bud  forth  from  the  permanent  attitude  of 
love,  which  varies  in  strength  within  us  according 
to  our  circumstantial  histories.  The  particular 
will  may  err,  but  its  errors  are  not  essential  to  it. 
Consciousness,  though  inevitably  characterized 
by  the  struggle  of  the  soul  toward  goodness, 
though  it  demands  that  a  struggle  shall  have  heeriy 

62 


THE    WILL 

can  know  neither  evil  nor  death  when  the  conflict 
is  won. 

Difliculty  of  conceiving  of  heaven  arises  be- 
cause the  consummation  of  our  life  implies  the 
arrival  at  infinity,  in  view  of  which  the  under- 
standing fails.  There  are  passages  in  opera  music 
in  which  a  voice  or  instrument  holds  one  note 
while  the  rest  of  the  chorus  or  orchestra  runs 
through  a  long  series  of  changing  harmonies.  The 
single  note  remains  true  and  unvarying,  but  it 
continues  to  give  a  fresh  impression  deriving 
variety  from  the  variety  going  on  about  it.  Thus 
the  absolute  may  be  still,  yet  alive  in  the  mind. 
We  know  even  here  and  now  of  happy  activities 
without  taint  of  evil.  Life  has  its  painless  changes, 
and  love  knows  of  variety  with  no  shadow  but 
the  shadow  of  repose.  A  spiritual  sunlight  casts 
its  happiness  even  into  the  simple  activities  of 
this  transient  life. 

But  let  us  not  mistake  the  nature  of  this  light. 
It  is  a  perpetual  temptation  to  confuse  the  good 
with  the  pleasurable,  the  easy,  a  state  of  mind  of 
peaceable  enjoyment.  Dreams  of  beauty  allure 
us  earned  by  earlier  endeavors,  lighted  by  inher- 
ited tradition  or  waked  by  the  monuments  of 
great  accomplishments.  But  the  fulfilment  of  our 
dreams  we  could  not  and  would  not  accept  un- 
earned. They  are  not  fulfilments  if  they  are  not 
won  —  if  they  are  not  attained  by  the  overcom- 
ing of  those  difficulties  or  confusions  which  they 
are  a  departure  from.    Throughout  this  life  love 

63- 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

may  at  any  moment  lead  us  into  pain  and  sacri- 
fice. 

In  reality  all  the  delights  of  experience  get  their 
virtue  from  the  overflowing  of  the  inscrutable 
inner  nature  toward  which  religion  is  groping. 
The  virtues  are  the  merest  stepping-stones, 
blocks  quarried  out  of  an  infinite  mountain.  True 
goodness  is  above,  beyond,  yet  permeating  all 
else.  Its  essence  can  only  be  found  in  acts  of  over- 
coming. It  is  measured  by  eff'ort.  It  is  not  for  us 
to  calculate  the  reward. 


CHAPTER  IV 

IDEAS 

Reason  is  a  permanent  subjective  realization  of 
the  essence  of  truth,  whose  different  aspects  thus 
realized  are  like  the  different  parts  of  a  spectrum, 
the  personal  consciousness  being  as  a  prism.  The 
ideas  of  reason  are  its  nouns.  They  demand  their 
own  authority  and  coherence,  nothing  more.  By 
them  the  sensations  which  come  flooding  upon 
the  conscious  centre  are  lighted.  Our  perceptions 
fall  rapidly  into  a  scheme.  Points,  lines,  planes, 
triangles,  and  spheres;  measure,  number,  perma- 
nence, time,  momentum,  all  unite  to  construct  a 
world.  There  is  a  hierarchy  of  ideas  beginning  in 
the  simple  utilitarian  concepts  and  formulas,  and 
leading  up  to  the  ethical  elements  of  reason.    . 

All  that  Is  known  of  space  and  time  is  derived 
from  some  aspect  of  our  consciousness.  Your 
house  and  the  tree  across  the  field  are  connected, 
so  far  as  any  thought  of  yours  is  concerned,  only 
by  space;  and  space,  as  we  think  of  It  as  a  contin- 
uous medium,  is  a  component,  or  feature  of  con- 
sciousness. The  house  and  the  tree  alike  are 
transient,  and  to  your  shifting  perceptions  the 
space  which  unites  them  has  no  reality  except  as 
it  is  marked  and  characterized  by  such  shifting 
evanescent  phenomena,  as  the  gravel  and  loam, 

6S 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

the  grass  and  flowers  which  intervene.  And  yet 
the  mind  recognizes  a  necessity  and  a  law  in  these 
connections.  The  idea  of  a  continuous  space  is 
beyond  the  reach  of  these  changing  phenomena 
by  virtue  of  its  being  an  idea.  Thus  also  all  that 
is  a  necessity  in  the  objective  world  is  ideal.  The 
newsboys  go  to  the  news  office,  take  up  a  sheaf  of 
papers,  all  bearing  the  same  print,  and  carry  them 
in  different  directions  selling  and  selling  till  all 
are  gone.  The  facts  emerge  loaded  with  the  bur- 
den or  print  of  one  or  more  ideas,  live  a  short  and 
eventful  life  as  carriers,  pass  on  their  meaning  or 
value,  and  disappear. 

Our  thought  proceeds  by  arresting  aspects  of 
truth  —  the  attention  rests  ever  so  slightly  upon 
a  part  of  the  natural  flow  of  consciousness,  stamps 
it,  and  thus  utilizes  principles,  concepts,  and  the 
like.  This  is  our  experience  of  ideas,  but  the  reali- 
ties back  of  such  experience  are  not  to  be  rested 
upon.  Take,  for  instance,  the  idea  of  a  point.  If 
we  try  to  conceive  of  it,  it  retreats  at  once  into 
its  uses,  and  as  a  primitive  concept  has  evapo- 
rated. For  a  point  fills  no  space  and  therefore 
cannot  be  described  by  any  Inherent  character  or 
quality.  .It  is  dependent  upon  position,  that  is  to 
say,  upon  its  relation  to  things  outside  itself;  but 
all  things  outside  itself  are  changing.  Thus  it  is 
describable  only  by  relative  terms  which  deal 
with  variable  phenomena. 

Yet  ideas  reappear  after  every  analysis  with 
their  original  significance.    In  the  history  of  our 

66 


IDEAS 

personal  thought  we  discover  constants,  recurring 
thoughts  whose  meaning  is  always  the  same,  or  if 
there  is  any  variation  in  the  meaning,  it  is  because 
of  new  relations  in  which  the  idea  is  found  or  new 
uses  to  which  it  is  put,  and  not  from  any  inherent 
changeableness.  These  constants  are  absolute  in 
themselves  no  matter  how  changeable  or  relative 
may  be  the  intellectual  experience  by  which  we 
become  aware  of  them.  Two  plus  two  always  was 
and  always  will  be  four.  We  may  appear  to  create 
the  concepts  we  use,  for  we  gradually  institute 
them  as  habits  of  thought;  but  concepts,  princi- 
ples, or  ideas  are  always  ready  to  hand.  Being 
invariable,  being  capable  of  the  same  use  in  the 
same  circumstances  for  all  time,  they  are  not  sub- 
ject to  our  own  historical  development.  It  is  only 
the  expression  we  give  to  them  which  we  create. 
There  would  be  no  meaning  in  relativity  if  there 
were  not  something  which  was  not  relative.  In 
our  experience  there  may  be  no  fixed  inch;  all 
examples  of  inches  are  shifting;  all  thought  of 
inches,  as  of  everything,  is  in  process  of  change. 
There  is,  nevertheless,  an  absoluteness  in  the 
difference  between  one  arbitrary  inch  and  a 
length  twice  as  great,  or  between  one  inaccurate 
material  measure  and  another.  If  there  is  any 
inaccuracy  in  a  measure  it  is  inaccurate  by  virtue 
of  the  fact  of  an  ideal  exactitude.  There  would  be 
no  possible  method  of  discounting  error,  devia- 
tion, and  modification  if  there  were  not  a  standard 
which  does  not  change.  The  existence  of  the  rela- 

67 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

tive  implies  the  existence  of  the  absolute.  The 
existence  of  error  implies  the  existence  of  that 
which  is  not  an  error,  and  so  on. 

It  is  with  difficulty  that  we  escape  the  limita- 
tions of  relativity,  and  of  finite  appearances.  We 
marvel  that  a  sperm-cell  should  transmit  the 
character  of  a  man.  But  why  is  it  more  marvel- 
lous that  the  germ  should  carry  character  than 
that  the  man  should  possess  character?  The  scale 
of  magnitudes  stretches  to  infinite  maximums 
and  infinite  minimums.  If  the  cell  were  magnified 
to  the  size  of  a  man,  it  would  not  astonish  us  that 
it  should  have  as  much  variety  as  the  man.  Why, 
because  it  is  smaller  than  the  objects  which  our 
eyes  are  gauged  to  see,  should  it  not  be  infinitely 
complex  in  structure,  even  as  the  world  of  which 
it  is  a  part  is  infinitely  complex?  Or  supposing  it 
to  be  comparatively  simple,  one  part  like  another 
in  substance;  dependent  for  its  nature  upon  its 
relation  to  things  outside  itself;  it  would  remind 
us  that  the  form  and  structure  of  the  human  body 
is  in  one  sense  completely  dependent  on  things 
outside  the  body.  It  has  hands  to  reach  food, 
eyes  to  see,  ears  to  hear,  etc.  Thus  the  complete 
description  of  any  one  thing  involves  the  com- 
plete description  of  every  other  thing. 

It  is  impossible  for  the  understanding  to  cope 
with  an  idea.  An  idea  has  no  more  proof  of  its 
own  existence  than  has  a  pure  sensation.  Either 
you  apprehend  or  you  do  not  apprehend.  Nor 
does  your  seeing  or  not  seeing  have  the  slightest 

68 


IDEAS 

influence  upon  the  necessitated  or  ideal  element 
in  your  experience. 

The  universe  is  a  structure  of  concepts.  Ideas 
give  us  our  world.  The  stamp  goes  on  each  thing 
automatically  by  the  act  of  thinking  of  it.  Con- 
versely we  must  explore  into  the  nature  of  every- 
thing to  get  at  the  nature  of  ideas.  Our  version 
of  truth  to  be  of  any  real  value  must  go  around 
to  all  the  departments  of  knowledge  and  be 
checked  up  as  containing  the  data  of  all.  We  shall 
find  a  thoroughgoing,  hard-headed  materialist 
will  quite  unconsciously  make  a  better  portrait 
of  an  idea  than  many  a  so-called  idealist.  Materi- 
alistic notions  are  merely  misnamed  ideas. 

We  must  look  for  something  absolute  and  inex- 
orable to  which  the  human  mind  is  the  key.  But 
we  must  recognize  also  that  thought,  our  only 
means  of  apprehending  truth,  is  in  motion,  is 
alive.  (You  accept  some  formula  or  explanation, 
the  nebular  hypothesis,  the  atomic  theory,  feeling 
like  one  who  has  got  into  a  clubroom  where  all  is 
quiet  and  settled,  only  to  find  that  you  are  not  in 
a  clubroom  at  all,  but  in  a  railroad  car  which, 
moves  along  after  you  have  got  on  board  of  it.y 
Insoluble  problems  arise  from  the  relationship 
between  ideas  and  change.  The  whirling  facts 
draw  the  ideas  into  obscure  mazes,  and  irrational 
or  capricious  distortions.  Yet  once  we  escape 
from  the  region  of  personal  choice,  there  is  no 
caprice  whatever.  We  may  hope  in  time  to  learn 
by  culture  of  the  intellect  the  beauty  and  rhythm/ 

69 


/^ 


r 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

the  reaction  and  cycle  in  all  that  is  chaotic,  to  see 
the  dance  and  fugue  of  reason,  its  mystery  and 
song,  not  only  its  still,  icy  mountain  peaks. 

The  absolute  plunges  into  the  relative  and  the 
ideas  ride  upon  the  waves  of  change.  They  appear 
to  swallow  the  whole  universe,  and  yet  remain 
but  points  of  view.  Inasmuch  as  they  are  known 
as  integral  parts  of  a  historic  consciousness,  they 
look  out  of  time.  They  cannot  escape  their  re- 
latedness.  It  is  in  vain  to  conceive  them  pure  and 
lonely. 

The  mind  demands  the  existence  of  a  pure 
independent  idea,  but  it  fulfils  this  demand  by 
disregarding  the  relatedness  of  ideas.  These 
archetypes,  the  point,  the  line,  the  triangle,  the 
idea  of  a  plane,  of  a  solid,  of  mass,  of  motion,  of 
externality,  are  all  related.  Yet  in  the  measure  of 
their  meaning  and  extent  they  are  wholly  inde- 
pendent of  particulars.  In  this  sense  the  ideas  are 
real,  unchanging,  and  absolute. 

TIME 

It  never  troubles  the  idea  that  we  appreciate  it 
only  through  experience.  The  temporal  element 
of  experience  is  itself  grounded  upon  an  idea. 

The  will  is  immersed  in  Time.  The  will  could 
have  no  sphere  of  activity  without  Time.  Motion 
of  any  sort  presupposes  Time.  Time  and  Space 
together  are  part  of  Necessity.  Yet  Time  like 
Space  is  lighted  into  reality  only  by  ideas;  having 
no  more  right  than  other  absolute  realities,  per- 

70 


TIME 

manence  for  instance.  If  we  ask  ourselves  how  it 
happens  that  we  conceive  the  idea  of  permanence 
while  Time  exists,  and  renders  any  experience  of 
permanence  impossible;  for  reply  we  may  find  in 
the  idea  of  permanence  itself  a  proof  of  the  per- 
manence of  ideas.  In  any  case  a  mathematical 
formula  such  as  2  +  2  =  4  is  sufficient  proof  of  the 
validity  of  the  idea  of  permanence. 

In  thinking  we  simply  trust  ourselves  to  truths 
which  cannot  change.  Thought  in  its  particular 
history  continually  attaches  itself  to  eternal  ideas. 
It  is  like  the  long  streamers  of  kelp  waving  in  a 
tide-way,  rooted  in  fundamentals  and  trailing 
into  the  stream  of  time.  But  this  figure  and  all 
figures  are  but  the  shifting  drapery  of  illusion  in 
which  the  temporal  idea  is  veiled.  The  sense  that 
time  is  streaming  by,  or. that  we  are  moving 
through  time,  alike  are  illusions;  for  all  truth,  all 
reality,  is  seated  in  the  present.  The  past  is  given 
off  from  the  present  as  the  sparks  are  given  forth 
from  a  rocket.  Because  when  once  it  is  given  oiF 
we  can  fix  our  attention  on  any  point  in  the  series 
the  present  has  created,  and  affirm  that  that  point 
was  once  coincident  with  the  present,  we  imagine 
we  are  at  a  point  in  a  series  going  on  into  the 
future  in  advance  of  us;  but  in  reality  no  such 
advance  exists.  There  is  no  such  series  until  it  is 
past.  There  is  no  future  at  all.  The  present  is 
perpetually  modified  by  its  own  activity,  or 
rather  the  immediate  conscious  self  of  the  uni- 
verse, which  is  what  fills  the  present,  is  perpetu- 

.71 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

ally  changing,  and  this  is  the  origin  of  a  continu- 
ally renewing  present.  But  all  that  we  project 
into  the  future  is  imaginary.  It  is  the  painting  on 
a  blank  wall,  of  notions,  phobias,  pictures,  or 
dreams  gleaned  from  the  past.  The  past  is  his- 
torical, the  future  is  imaginary,  the  present  is 
personal. 

We  must,  however,  distinguish  between  the 
personal  experience  of  time  and  the  historical 
necessity  of  time.  Imagine  a  man  passing  through 
an  agony:  an  accident  has  happened,  and  those 
who  are  dearest  to  him  hover  between  life  and 
death.  He  is  waiting  or  acting  throughout  the 
night.  His  activities  are  feverish  and  concen- 
trated, his  waiting  is  crowded  with  hope  and  fear, 
innumerable  memories  return  to  him,  he  is  swayed 
by  dreadful  anticipations;  and  curious  moments 
of  philosophic  speculation  come  like  annotations 
to  a  printed  page.  Into  these  passing  hours  years 
of  experience  are  condensed.  Suppose  in  the  same 
street  three  doors  away  there  is  a  laborer  tired 
with  an  honest  day's  work,  who,  at  the  moment 
the  accident  befell,  sank  into  a  dreamless  sleep, 
and  all  night  long  parallel  with  that  agony,  he 
lies  unconscious  as  the  walls  of  his  house,  and 
waking  in  the  morning  knows  no  experience  of 
time.  For  one  ten  hours  meant  nothing.  He  shut 
his  eyes  and  opened  them  again,  the  world  tells 
him  ten  of  its  hours  are  gone;  for  the  other  the 
greatest  moments  of  his  life  have  been  passing. 
But  what  measures  the  conscious  passage  of  time  ? 

72 


LAW 

Surely  nothing  In  the  external  nature  of  the 
world.  Time  is  indeed  infinitely  elastic.  And  yet 
by  some  temporal  element  in  life,  the  experiences 
of  these  two  men  will  fit  exactly  together.  The 
present  moment  is  a  unity  for  the  universe,  and 
out  from  this  unity  personal  experience  cannot  by 
any  means  escape. 

There  is  also  an  unerring  reality,  so  far  as  we 
can  observe,  in  the  principle  by  virtue  of  which  a 
chronometer,  or  the  more  permanent  periods  of 
astronomy,  can  be  made  to  measure  the  changes 
of  the  natural  world.  This  principle  is  the  his- 
torical necessity  of  time  and  is  derived  from  our 
investigation  of  the  past.  In  this  investigation 
mechanistic  ideas  are  necessary  because  the  past 
is  absolutely  fixed,  and  it  cannot  be  described 
without  ideas  which  express  that  fixity.  The  pres- 
ent, to  be  sure,  includes  this  description  of  the 
past  as  one  of  its  factors,  but  is  only  in  part  limited 
by  it.  The  whole  question  of  the  influence  of  the 
past  upon  the  present  resolves  itself  into  a  ques- 
tion of  dynamics,  or  more  specifically  of  momen- 
tum.  This  leads  us  to  the  consideration  of  Law. 

LAW 

It  is  a  natural  error  in  the  progress  of  thought 
to  suppose  that  ideas  interpret  the  world  rather 
than  that  the  world  interprets  ideas.  In  this 
confusion  lies  the  root  of  a  large  part  of  philo- 
sophic controversy.  It  is  true  that  the  ideas  of  a 
given  group  of  men  interpret  the  world  as  a  child 

73 


CYCLES    OF    PERSONAL     BELIEF 

interprets  his  father's  book  by  reading  it.  The 
child  may  read  and  reverence  the  book,  but  the 
book  is  the  product  of  the  father.  It  has  no  origi- 
nal growth  of  its  own.  The  world  is  the  product 
of  the  spirit  and  illustrates  the  laws  of  the  spirit. 

The  study  of  force,  of  motion,  of  momentum  is, 
in  reality,  the  study  of  life.  The  vast  momentums 
of  astronomy  are  proof  of  the  antiquity  of  the 
spirit.  The  universal  symbol  of  love  is  gravity, 
and  similarly  we  may  find  the  life  of  the  human 
heart  portrayed  in  a  thousand  ways  in  the  natural 
processes,  ^the  recognition  of  which  we  call 
symbolism. 

Now  in  the  discussion  of  will,  there  appeared  a 
distinction  between  necessity  and  fate,  corre- 
sponding to  the  distinction  between  love  and  will, 
and  again  between  reason  and  understanding, 
and  ideas  and  thoughts.  This  distinction  divides 
a  higher  from  a  lower  sphere.  Activities  corre- 
sponding to  the  higher  sphere,  that  is,  the  sphere 
of  reason  and  necessity,  are  absolute,  unalterable 
laws,  but  the  wilful  activities,  activities  which 
might  be  other  than  what  they  are,  operate  in  the 
subordinate  sphere,  and  are  obviously  not  neces- 
sitated. 

In  the  sphere  of  particulars,  that  is,  in  the  world 
of  everyday  life,  where  we  see  plainly  that  things 
may  be  one  way  or  the  other,  where  there  is  wrong 
as  well  as  right,  the  understanding  is  baffled  in  its 
attempt  to  reconcile  the  conception  of  universal 
law  with  the  existence  of  lawlessness  and  error.  If 

74 


LAW 

laws  are  universal  and  necessary,  how  Is  it  they 
can  be  broken? 

At  first  sight  we  might  conceive  that  mechan- 
ical aggregations  should  by  law  make  mistakes. 
There  might  be  a  law  which  led  to  destruction  if 
the  facts  were  thus,  to  evolution  if  the  facts  were 
so,  and  the  activity  of  law  might  constantly  pro- 
duce both  sets  of  conditions,  and  consciousness 
be  a  spectator  at  its  own  lawful  evolution  in  the 
one  case  and  destruction  in  the  other.  In  this  way 
there  could  be  unswerving,  inexorable  laws,  and 
yet  errors.  But  what  a  foolish  way  to  look  at  the 
world,  how  utterly  irrelevant  to  our  interests  and 
destinies. 

If  we  push  home  the  distinction  between  uni- 
versal and  particular,  the  difficulty  will  in  part 
be  cleared  away.  In  the  first  place,  universal  laws 
are  not  incompatible  with  error  and  confusion; 
indeed,  to  be  universal,  law  must  be  in  some  way 
related  to  the  apparently  lawless  or  chaotic  phases 
of  existence.  Such  laws,  however,  are  not  mechan- 
ical nor  can  they  be  comprehensible  to  the  under- 
standing, emerging  as  they  do  out  of  infinity.  It 
is  only  as  they  become  particularized  by  applica- 
tion to  given  sets  of  facts  that  the  understanding 
can  grapple  with  them.  The  particular  aspect  of 
law  applies  to  particular  facts,  and  is  not  irre- 
fragable. 

Consider  the  case  of  a  man  laying  out  a  garden 
bed  which  is  meant  to  be  an  exact  circle.  The 
course  of  his  spade  is  governed  by  the  geometric 

75; 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

nature  of  a  circle,  but  In  point  of  fact  he  deviates 
from  the  true  circle  which  serves  in  his  mind  as 
his  guide.  He  is  in  error  with  respect  to  a  circle, 
but  that  does  not  mean  his  spade  has  escaped  into 
a  lawless  region.  Particular  laws  are  of  account 
only  in  the  exact  course  of  their  influence,  but  we 
may  break  away  from  any  particular  application. 
Lawlessness  always  means  lawlessness  with  re- 
spect to  particular  laws.  On  the  other  hand,  uni- 
versal law  exists  regardless  of  all  breaks  of  par- 
ticular law  and  has  no  reciprocal  relation  to 
phenomena;  it  governs,  but  is  not  influenced  by 
the  facts  which  it  governs. 

In  their  own  line  particular  laws  reflect  the  in- 
evitableness  of  the  universal  laws.  Thus,  if  we 
find  here  and  there  what  appear  superficially  to 
be  breaches  in  the  law  of  gravity,  such  as  the 
action  of  a  magnet,  we  do  not  for  a  moment  sup- 
pose that  the  law  of  gravity  has  been  suspended. 
By  experiment  we  can  give  practical  proof  that 
gravity  Is  acting  on  the  magnetized  body,  and  the 
activity  of  the  body  is  always  a  joint  product  of 
the  two  forces;  then  we  unhesitatingly  attribute 
universality  to  the  operation  of  gravity.  Never- 
theless, the  phenomena  of  the  comet's  tail,  and 
the  theory  for  explaining  it,  —  namely,  that  the 
force  of  light  acting  on  the  atoms  of  matter  in 
their  separated  state  is  greater  than  the  force  of 
gravity,  —  shows  how  conditions  might  e^Ist  for 
a  consciousness  In  which  the  force  of  gravity  was 
not  known,  or  if  known,  would  be  negligible. 

76 


LAW 

We  may  always,  at  some  point  In  an  investiga- 
tion, reach  the  limits  of  application  of  any  physi- 
cal law.  At  such  a  point  the  law  becomes  partic- 
ular and  not  universal.  There  is  no  evidence  in 
nature  —  other  than  such  as  is  based  upon  prob- 
ability ^ —  of  the  universality  of  gravity  or  of  any 
other  physical  or  chemical  law.  The  assumption 
of  this  universality  arises  from  the  necessity  of 
such  universality  in  ideal  sciences  like  mathe- 
matics. That  which  gives  universality  to  law  is 
mind.  Thus,  whenever  an  absolute  character  is 
found  in  the  physical  laws,  it  is  because  the  mind 
stamps  the  facts  as  it  finds  them. 

Chaos  and  confusion  surround  the  will  In  Its 
particular  history,  fon  the  moral  laws  or  laws  of 
love  presuppose  all  forms  of  opportunity.  The 
law  of  our  being  is  primarily  spiritual.  Nothing 
can  be  spiritual  which  is  not  free.  The  necessity 
of  freedom  is  the  keynote  of  universal  law. 

The  will  is  necessitated  to  choose.  What  we 
think  of  as  freedom  is  the  exhilaration  we  feel 
upon  abandoning  a  lower,  and  coming  into  obedi- 
ence to  higher,  law,  into  harmony  with  deeper 
necessities.  When  for  instance  a  man  chooses 
self-denial,  in  place  of  selfish  desire,  there  is  after 
the  abnegation  an  unpredictable  unfettering  of 
his  nature.  Yet  the  opportunity  to  deny  the 
higher  impulse  is  what  makes  volition  real.  The 
soul  is  Godlike.  It  lives  among  laws  which  are 
unlimited,  laws  incomprehensible  but  to  itself. 
It  is  itself  absolute,  carrying  the  eternal  truth  in 

77 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

its  eye.  It  creates  with  complete  authority. 
Necessity  receives  its  creations  as  the  cradle  re- 
ceives the  baby. 

UNITY 

We  are  children  of  one  spirit,  we  need  have  no 
fear  of  universal  laws,  nor  shyness  in  the  presence 
of  ideas.  As  we  come  into  unison  with  the  uni- 
versal elements,  as  we  apprehend  ideas  in  their 
purity,  we  find  the  necessities  are  beneficent.  We 
do  not  chafe  at  law,  because  the  utmost  freedom 
could  not  induce  us  to  set  our  will  in  opposition 
to  the  law  of  love.  We  perceive  the  vision  of  an 
ideal  sphere,  a  realm  of  truth  bewilderingly  bril- 
liant and  joyous.  Our  difficulty  is  in  seeing  the 
truth  clearly  enough  to  be  convinced  of  its  cer- 
tainty. There  is  a  beauty  and  perfection  about 
ideas  which  we  do  not  dare  to  think  in  any  way 
appertains  to  ourselves.  It  is  not  easy  to  own  our 
inheritance.  We  doggedly  persist  in  a  disconti- 
nuity between  ourselves  and  God.  The  ideas  so 
resplendent  before  the  intellectual  gaze  seem  alien 
and  unreal  because  not  personal. 

Yet  if  we  ask  ourselves  where  the  self  leaves  off 
and  the  external  begins,  we  find  at  once  that  the 
seat  of  consciousness  is  unknown.  Without  a 
cortex,  no  consciousness.  But  we  may  say  with 
equal  truth  of  an  electric  lighting  plant,  without  a 
bulb,  no  light.  The  dynamo  may  be  going,  the 
current  running  in  the  wires,  and  yet,  if  no  bulb 
or  similar  device  is  introduced  in  the  circuit,  no 

78 


UNITY 

light  will  be  visible.  Our  self  is  associated  with 
the  resistance  by  which  the  current  illuminates. 
We  know  only  our  own  cast  of  thought.  We 
attribute  the  idea  of  self  to  the  particular  limita- 
tions against  which  the  light  of  life  is  projected. 
Thus,  the  child  knowing  nothing  of  dynamos  and 
wires  will  think  that  the  bulb  is  the  source  of  the 
light.  We  similarly  think  of  the  brain  as  the 
source  of  consciousness.  Yet  the  supposition 
that  each  conscious  self  is  inevitably  associated 
with  the  particular  brain  it  uses,  has  no  basis  in 
necessity. 

Every  bit  of  consciousness  is  identical  in  certain 
respects  with  every  other  bit  of  consciousness. 
The  manner  in  which  fishes  lose  their  little  indi- 
vidualities by  the  constant,  devouring  process  of 
marine  life,  is  suggestive.  Where  does  the  aware- 
ness of  the  clam  leave  off  in  favor  of  the  satisfac- 
tion in  the  crab  who  eats  him.'*  Has  the  victim 
a  divine  intuition  that  his  million  cousins  live 
placidly  on  and  on.f*  There  is  no  distinct  line 
where  one  consciousness  leaves  off  and  another 
begins.  On  the  other  hand,  every  moment  of  time 
gives,  in  each  consciousness,  some  distinction 
between  itself  and  every  other  moment.  Thus  the 
ideas  of  differentiation  and  unity  are  blended  in 
everything.  The  character  of  the  unities  is  ex- 
pressed in  variety.  But  the  unity  of  things  is  the 
more  fundamental  element  in  their  nature. 

In  the  physical  world  the  seat  of  consciousness 
is  not  necessarily  anywhere,  whatever  its  special 

79 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

manifestations  may  be.  As  the  body  is  but  a 
sponge  maintained  by  the  liquids  it  absorbs,  a 
sponge  perpetually  fraying  away  at  the  edges, 
and  renewed  many  times  within  the  lifetime  of  a 
man,  so  also  the  thoughts  of  the  individual  are  at 
all  times  passing  in  and  out  of  him,  and  all  his 
principles  and  concepts  are  built  out  of  the  com- 
mon stock  of  humanity,  and  his  own  proprietor- 
ship is  an  illusion.   The  self  is  deeper  still. 

If  the  stronger  vibrations  or  currents  in  the 
universe  were  annulled,  we  might  perceive  other 
vibrations  or  currents  as  we  perceive  the  starlight 
when  the  nearer  light  of  the  sun  becomes  dim. 
Thus  we  might  find  the  remoter  parts  of  nature, 
the  vegetation,  and  the  rocks  and  sea,  were  linked 
with  our  own  being  by  intimate  sympathies,  more 
exact  and  inevitable  than  our  present  poetic 
fancies  even  give  a  hint  of.  Then  our  instinctive 
repugnance  to  pantheism  would  seem  trivial. 

I  recall  the  picture  of  a  lily  pond  in  a  wood  of 
sassafras  and  tupelo.  Over  the  flowers  dragon- 
flies  are  darting.  On  the  margin  are  mosses  and 
ferns,  sedges  and  reeds,  and  low  arching  loose- 
strife, above  which  a  bank  of  blueberry,  clethra, 
and  other  swamp  bushes  forms  an  encircling  wall 
of  leaves.  What  has  all  this  life  in  common,  each 
part  with  each.''  This  picture  lies  in  my  mind  a 
unity.  A  unity  it  was  when  I  came  upon  it,  a 
little  gem  in  nature,  complete  in  itself.  It  has  its 
own  individual  character  shared  by  all  its  parts, 
but  deeper  than  that,  it  has  the  universal  spirit  of 

80 


UNITY 

life;  and  we  may  wonder  as  much  at  the  varia- 
tions between  sedge  and  sedge,  lily  and  lily,  as  at 
the  brooding  unity  of  the  whole.  These  flowers, 
one  much  like  another,  reveal  a  single  character, 
exemplified  many  times,  as  a  note  or  chord  in 
music  may  be  repeated  over  and  over  again. 

If  one  watches  blackbirds  wheeling  over  a 
marsh,  one  may  see  thirty  or  forty  individuals 
change  the  direction  of  their  flight  apparently 
upon  a  single  impulse.  Perhaps  all  react  simul- 
taneously to  the  same  outward  event,  perhaps 
one  is  leader,  and  all  the  rest  follow  him;  but  so 
instantaneously  is  the  signal  obeyed  that  you  will 
fail  to  distinguish  which  the  leader  is.  In  either 
case  here  is  a  single  response  linking  these  birds 
together.  The  individual,  as  the  spatial,  differ- 
ences are  superficial.  The  birds  feel  alike  and  act 
alike;  essentially  they  are  identical.  It  is  but  little 
different  with  man.  People  often  become  nearly 
identical  in  their  sympathies,  or  with  respect  to 
certain  aspects  of  life  they  become  completely 
identical,  the  differences  branching  apart  as  they 
meet  a  different  set  of  conditions.  Our  differences 
are  annulled  or  held  in  abeyance  by  strong  patri- 
otic passions  or  similar  influences;  and  like  the 
blackbirds,  many  men  will  act  as  one. 

We  are  more  or  less  remote  from  one  another, 
as  one  part  of  a  man's  body  is  more  or  less  remote 
from  some  other  part.  Personality  is  continuous. 
Nowhere  does  your  own  personality  leave  off  and 
the  external  world  begin.  There  is  something  for- 

8i 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

eign  in  every  particle  of  your  body  —  something 
which  may  be  cast  off,  and  the  conscious  self 
remain  the  same,  and  there  is  something  apper- 
taining to  you  throughout  the  whole  extent  of 
nature.  Intimate  sympathies  lie  in  store  for  us 
among  alien  surroundings,  or  remote  corners  of 
nature,  and  even  peculiar  and  strange  forms  con- 
vey an  echo  of  familiarity.  The  unity  which  the 
eye  gives  the  pond  is  not  arbitrary  or  fanciful. 
It  is  a  necessity  in  the  mind  to  find  nature  thus. 
All  is  a  hierarchy  of  unities  branching  from  deeper 
unities.  Our  particular  self  as  we  ordinarily  think 
of  it  is  but  a  trifling  part  of  our  whole  nature.  The 
self  even  in  its  particular  history  dates  back  into 
the  obscurity  of  the  generation  which  preceded  us. 
The  blood-line  has  a  strange  and  shifting  identity 
throughout  its  length.  The  self  as  a  private  indi- 
vidual is  lost  among  its  limitations  only  to  reap- 
pear in  deeper  more  far-reaching  relationships. 

Personality  itself  has  an  incalculable  scope. 
Our  astronomical  so-called  universe  is  particular 
and  individual,  albeit  shafts  of  universal  thought 
illuminate  its  vastness.  We  constantly  attribute 
universality  where  it  does  not  belong,  trusting 
too  far  our  particular  notions;  and  shut  out  the 
influence  of  wild  or  wayward  instincts  which 
could  lead  us  to  an  outlook  on  a  higher  sphere. 

SELECTION 

Each  human  soul  is  born  with  an  instinct  which 
teaches  him  there  exists  a  reality  better  than  his 

82 


SELECTION 

present  condition.  The  ideals  express  a  spiritual 
necessity.  The  light  of  ideas  shining  upon  what  is 
wrong  leads  us  to  strive  toward  what  is  right. 
Consciousness  evolves  by  its  own  choices. 

Among  the  flavors  and  aromas  of  our  particular 
occasional  sensations  we  pick  and  choose.  We 
pursue,  childlike,  whatever  is  attractive.  This 
instinct  is  innocent  and  strong.  For,  after  all,  it  is 
not  among  severe  moral  restrictions  that  happi- 
ness is  to  be  found;  it  is  rather  in  the  quest  of  the 
beautiful.  We  need  not  court  difficulty,  for  if 
once  we  perceive  flashes  and  gleams  of  the  ideal 
beauty,  our  road  is  rugged  enough.  Love  is  utterly 
imperative.  The  operation  of  its  law  compels; 
if  we  have  ever  seen  or  even  dreamed  of  the  better 
we  can  never  be  content  with  the  worse.  This  law 
applies  to  everything,  sensation,  thought,  and 
affection  alike.  We  do  not  seek  discipline,  we 
seek  a  finer  and  ever  finer  happiness.  Discipline, 
by  love's  own  necessities,  governs  our  seeking. 
And  as  we  realize  more  and  more  fully  the  nature 
of  true  happiness,  we  take  discipline  the  more 
cheerfully,  and  shirk  it  less  and  less. 

Beauty  is  the  immediate  and  intelligible  goal  of 
our  particular  progress.  We  would  not  ordain 
virtue  for  others.  We  would  give  them  beauty. 
For  ourselves  we  cultivate  beauty  by  pursuing 
virtue.  We  value  the  immediate  objects  with 
which  we  deal  for  their  beauty,  and  virtue  is  the 
soil  or  nourishment  upon  which  they  live. 

Now  an  object  is  but  a  temporary  crystalliza- 
83 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

tion  of  an  impulse  in  its  course  through  the  mysti- 
cally uniform  substance.  Our  attention  takes  the 
impression  of  objects  and  becomes  a  propagator 
of  selected  pieces  in  the  web  of  impulses.  You 
look  into  a  garden.  Your  eye  roves  around  among 
the  flowers  and  presently  the  attention  rests  upon 
some  flower,  and  instantly  the  mind  makes  a  men- 
tal note  of  the  pleasure  it  has  just  experienced. 
Again  and  again  the  eye  reverts  to  that  one  speci- 
men, and  later,  —  months,  it  may  be  years,  later, 
—  the  memory  comes  back  sweet  and  fresh.  Then 
perhaps  in  time  you  make  your  own  garden.  You 
seek  that  flower,  find  its  name,  obtain  and  culti- 
vate it,  and  thus  your  cherished  impression  is 
propagated  in  the  physical  world.  The  home  and 
family  exist  by  virtue  of  the  same  law. 

The  world  progresses  by  a  process  of  selection 
and  emphasis.  Every  word  and  action  is  a  carving 
out  of  a  plastic  material  some  exemplification  of 
what  the  speaker  or  doer  prefers. 

The  potency  in  the  eye  itself  is  illustrated  by 
an  experience  related  to  me  by  a  friend.  He  had 
spent  several  days  at  cow-punching,  —  an  employ- 
ment with  which  he  was  unfamiliar,  —  and  in  the 
evening,  while  riding  away  from  the  herd  through 
the  woods,  discovered  that  he  saw  the  forms  of 
cows  continually  appearing  among  the  trees.  On 
closer  examination  he  would  find  no  cow  in  sight. 
He  explained  the  phenomena  thus:  in  the  lines 
on  the  retina  of  his  eye,  presented  by  the  trees 
and  rocks  as  he  passed  through  the  woods,  an 

84 


SELECTION 

almost  infinite  number  of  combinations  exists. 
The  cows  being,  therefore,  abnormally  prominent 
to  his  mind,  he  sees  them  continually,  though 
there  are  none  in  sight,  unconsciously  choosing 
their  forms  out  of  the  labyrinth  of  lines  presented 
to  the  eye. 

How  easy  to  conceive  through  the  same  influ- 
ence the  forms  of  satyrs  and  nymphs  in  a  miscel- 
laneous woodland  scene,  the  expectant  eye  sup- 
plying the  art,  which  for  the  painter  signalizes  or 
groups  the  lines  which  present  these  forms.  Even 
so  it  is  with  omens.  Among  the  vast  and  intricate 
data  before  our  eyes  and  ears,  he  who  has  a  pre- 
monitory instinct  within  him,  places  his  attention 
upon  the  significant  fact  or  combination  of  lines. 
We  speak  of  something  arresting  our  attention. 
Our  attention  arrests  the  something.  That  which 
we  give  our  attention  to,  carries  the  expression  of 
our  meaning  or  feeling  or  state  of  mind.  A  rein- 
terpretation  is  a  redistribution  of  attention.  A 
new  account  of  a  fact  in  history  is  often  different 
from  the  old  merely  because  the  emphasis  or 
stress  is  arranged  difl"erently.  When  materialist 
and  idealist  thrash  out  their  differences,  it  comes 
in  the  end  to  a  question  of  emphasis.  Any  sen- 
tence means  a  slightly  different  thing  according 
to  where  it  is  accented.  Nature  looks  wholly 
different  according  to  what  it  is  called. 

In  manners,  in  customs,  in  conversation,  in  all 
human  intercourse,  this  selective  habit  marks  the 
domestic  life  of  the  creative  impulse.  It  is  not  by 

8s 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

idle  repetitions  that  we  advance.  Thoroughness 
alone  is  vain.  It  is  a  greater  test  of  character  to 
be  discriminating  than  to  be  complete.  The  ency- 
clopaedic method  of  appreciating  truth  is  utterly- 
fallacious.  Our  function  as  living  beings  is  to 
choose.  As  Burbank  throws  away  countless 
plants,  after  selecting  a  handful  which  carry  the 
one  character  he  values,  so  our  records  are  shuffled 
into  oblivion  but  for  a  gleam  or  spark  here  and 
there  saved  from  the  dross.  So  also  all  the  labori- 
ous efforts  of  our  lives  are  subordinate  to  a  few 
golden  impulses,  a  few  hours  of  inspiration,  a  few 
communions  of  love. 

Thus  our  world  cannot  by  any  means  be  taken 
at  its  face  value.  There  is  a  meaning  back  of 
every  impression.  The  illusive  joy  of  childhood  is 
rooted  deep  in  nature.  The  strange  feeling  that 
awakes  at  the  cry  of  certain  birds,  a  blue  jay  in 
the  swamp,  a  wood  pewee  in  deep  woods,  or  a 
hawk  over  the  marsh,  proves  that  these  sounds 
are  for  us,  even  if  we  cannot  interpret  the  mean- 
ing. Within  you  lurks  a  predestined  monition 
which  calls  to  your  notice  those  things  which 
shall  become  the  food  of  your  existence. 

Often  our  progress  comes  from  the  reinterpre- 
tation  of  facts  which  we  cannot  change.  Our 
words  are  just  as  fatal  as  our  deeds.  Our  names, 
our  whole  vocabulary,  are  constructive  or  destruc- 
tive, much  more  our  thoughts.  How  the  thought 
of  home  sings  in  the  heart  of  an  American  when 
he  first  sees  the  Stars  and  Stripes  floating  in  a 

86 


SELECTION 

foreign  harbor.  Then  for  the  first  time  perhaps 
he  becomes  a  citizen  of  this  country.  It  is  largely 
by  the  recognition  of  greater  relationships  in 
commonplace  things  that  we  grow.  There  is  no 
experience  so  revolutionary  as  the  act  of  "un- 
masking the  disguised  Gods." 

You  cannot  escape  the  influence  of  names,  of 
words,  of  suggestions  and  associations  in  yourself 
and  your  companions.  All  society  is  built  upon 
them.  The  fashion  is  as  much  a  part  of  the  stream 
of  time  as  the  bubbles  are  a  part  of  the  river. 
Everything  has  its  sign  and  symbol.  Everything 
has  its  word  to  give.  You  too  must  say  something. 
The  bluebird  and  the  song  sparrow  sing  and  must 
sing.  In  the  South  the  cardinal  sits  on  a  tree 
pouring  into  the  soft  air  a  stream  of  liquid  beauty. 
He  is  but  obeying  the  simplest  natural  law.  Like 
him  you  are  impelled  by  an  internal  necessity  to 
express  yourself.  But  more  consciously  than  he 
you  are  dedicated,  and  cannot  content  yourself 
until  you  have  rendered  your  best. 


CHAPTER  V 

REILLUSION 


At  a  certain  stage  of  life  a  man  discovers  that 
criticism  and  analysis  are  self-destructive,  that 
scepticism  as  a  permanent  attitude  of  mind  is 
profitless,  and  with  this  discovery  he  begins  to 
feel  a  new  respect  for  his  early  impressions.  If 
you  have  seen  a  beautiful  picture,  even  if  it  van- 
ish in  the  next  instant,  that  one  moment  was 
absolutely  real.  Thus  it  is :  the  spirit  of  life  forever 
welling  up  within  the  universe  after  long  periods 
of  dearth  brings  us  fairy  gold  once  more.  It  is 
comparatively  unimportant  by  what  name  we 
call  the  spirit  so  long  as  we  commune  with  it  in 
some  manner.  It  may  be  saints  or  fairies,  or  birds 
or  flowers,  commonplace  or  dream,  intimacies  or 
festivals.  Our  eyes  are  opened  to  vital  truths, 
indiscriminately,  by  a  variety  of  means. 

As  we  begin  to  treat  our  own  consciousness  with 
the  reverence  which  is  its  due,  romance  begins  to 
steal  into  the  world,  now  here  and  now  there, 
until  one  day  we  discover  that  the  poetic  element 
which  we  thought  we  had  analyzed  and  explained, 
had  in  reality  eluded  us,  had  retreated  out  of  our 
experience  long  before  our  clumsy  thoughts  could 

88 


REILLUSION 

grapple  with  it.  And  here  are  our  illusions  back 
again,  or  new  ones  more  potent  to  make  us 
wonder. 

There  is  a  wayward  element  in  nature.  We 
only  half  trust  the  laws.  Here  is  a  field  of  grain 
upon  a  hill  —  a  high  wind  sweeps  across  it,  the 
light  and  shadow  in  constant  rhythm  play  over 
the  surface  as  the  gusts  follow  one  another.  Once 
it  was  the  Rye-mother  or  the  Rye-wolf  in  the 
crop.  Now,  though  no  one  has  ever  examined  or 
computed  these  motions,  yet,  because  of  analogy 
derived  from  other  discoveries,  it  is  law.  There 
was  a  time  when  man  dealt  with  these  things  by 
a  fantastic  imagery.  Perhaps  he  became  gradu- 
ally conscious  that  his  mind  was  creative  as  well 
as  nature;  but  his  own  fancies  were  grafted  upon 
an  interpretation  of  what  he  thought  was  real. 
As  the  long  filaments  of  algae  might  have  been 
taken  for  an  actual  mermaid's  hair,  so  here  in  the 
grain  a  moving,  conscious,  wilful  spirit  was  seen. 
And  still  the  actual  relation  of  these  living  mo- 
tions to  the  law  is  unknown.  Here  is  vegetative 
life,  here  a  sleeping  spirit  responding  to  the  touch 
of  the  wind.  And  you  wonder  if  this  is  really  gov- 
erned by  law,  or  if  governed  by  law  what  is  this 
mysterious  personality  in  the  grain,  which  an- 
swers to  your  own  heart.  Ah,  the  law  has  nothing 
to  say.  The  spirit  of  romance  has  touched  your 
heart,  some  hint  reflected  to  you,  whence  you 
know  not,  but  you  recognized  it.  You  should 
kneel  down  and  thank  God,  and  pray  that  your 

89 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

intellect  may  at  some  other  point  thaw  into 
fluidity. 

Those  people  who  tell  us  they  have  no  illusions 
might  well  be  asked  to  tell  us  what  the  exact 
truth  is,  for  the  assertion  that  one  has  no  illusions 
is  a  covert  claim  to  infallibility.  But  happiness 
lies  in  the  other  direction.  Give  us  the  people 
who  swim  in  a  sea  of  illusions;  and  if  there  is  a 
law  within  their  joys  it  cannot  be  expressed  but 
by  music  and  song.  Who  could  ever  name  the 
law  of  enthusiasm  or  of  abandon.'*  —  an  infinitely 
subtle  law  put  into  the  mind  of  the  poet  gratis. 
He  is  a  king  in  his  sphere,  the  laws  must  dance  or 
sing  for  him  if  he  wishes,  and  the  light  of  his  mind 
pierces  the  remotest  corners  of  nature,  and  makes 
all  physics  and  chemistry  irrelevant.  He  cares 
not  a  whit  whether  or  not  there  is  a  mathematics 
for  the  verities  with  which  he  deals. 

What  possible  explanation  could  any  physical 
science  give  for  the  color  and  form  in  our  paint- 
ings, for  the  shapes  of  our  monuments  and  sculp- 
ture? What  natural  law  accounts  for  the  Elgin 
marbles.'^  There  they  are  in  contrast  to  all  the 
rocks  and  stones  upon  the  earth.  Manifestly  they 
pleased  some  consciousness,  and  there  was  a 
genius  with  an  intuitive  knowledge  that  just  these 
shapes  would  please.  And  if  some  one  suggests 
that  these  marbles  were  made  in  imitation  of  liv- 
ing forms,  we  may  reply  that  it  is  not  the  imita- 
tive part  that  interests  us,  but  that  excellence, 
that  beauty,  be  it  ever  so  little,  which  surpasses 

90 


REILLUSION 

the  models  which  the  artist  may  have  used;  and 
that  selective  power  which  made  him  choose  just 
those  models  from  amid  a  thousand  other  avail- 
able ones. 

That  which  governs  the  production  of  works  of 
art  is  a  potency  inherent  in  consciousness,  a 
selecting  power  which  must  act.  We  choose  what 
to  us  is  desirable,  we  judge  by  what  pleases.  The 
working  of  this  law,  if  law  is  the  right  word,  we 
cannot  trace.  There  is  an  unknown,  unaccount- 
able element  in  pleasure  directly  influencing  our 
choices.  Since  also  the  sources  and  elements  of 
pleasure  are  in  one  sense  primary  and  elemental 
in  themselves;  we  cannot  calculate  the  original 
causes  of  life,  of  growth,  of  progress  toward  the 
beautiful,  by  any  science  whatever.  And  as  every 
atom  of  matter  is  embedded  in  an  aether  whose 
nature  and  properties  are  inexplicable,  so  every 
event,  every  experience,  every  thought  is  em- 
bedded in  an  absolute  mysticism. 

II 

Now  when  one  finds  that  his  beliefs,  his  im- 
pressions, his  contact  with  the  shifting  phenomena 
of  the  world  have  yet  a  reality  and  potency  which 
during  his  periods  of  doubt  seemed  lost,  he  begins 
to  enquire  with  a  keen  appetite  for  the  richness 
in  nature  which  he  thought  was  gone  forever. 
He  begins  to  question  how  the  belief  in  the  super- 
natural came  to  possess  its  wonder,  its  flavor,  its 
profound  significance.  There  is  always  something 

91 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

in  the  totality  of  a  belief  which  its  elemental 
factors  fail  to  explain. 

There  is  a  sea  captain  in  the  New  England 
coasting  trade,  a  man  of  chequered  career,  who 
once  told  me  about  a  haunted  ship  which  he 
used  to  take  to  sea.  There  were  uncanny  noises 
in  the  hold,  which  greatly  disturbed  the  crew.  He 
stuttered  as  he  said,  "I  told  them  it  w-w-w-was 
r-r-r-rats  " ;  then  he  added,  "  But  it  w-w-w-was  n't 
r-r-r-rats."  Apparently  his  was  the  type  of  mind 
which  believed  in  these  things,  believed  in  the 
actual  presence  of  supernatural  elements.  Well, 
what  was  actually  there.?  The  captain  will  prob- 
ably die  in  the  belief  that  the  cause  of  these 
noises  was  spirits;  the  crew  will  perhaps  die  in 
the  belief  that  "it  was  rats";  and  you  and  I  may 
believe  it  was  the  creaking  of  the  ship  herself.  It 
may  be  assumed  that  there  was  a  physical  basis 
for  the  noises;  that  is  to  say,  there  were  sound 
vibrations,  even  if  they  were  actuated  in  the  first 
place  by  spirits.  There  is  then  a  physical  basis, 
and  three  diverse  interpretations  of  the  actuating 
cause.  Three  beliefs  exist  side  by  side  profoundly 
modifying  the  mental  impressions  derived  from 
an  identical  phenomenon.  Now  the  interesting 
question  is,  and  always  has  been  in  such  cases, 
whence  came  the  sense  of  supernatural  power 
which  gave  rise  to  the  supposition  that  spirits 
haunted  the  ship.^*  Supposing  that  rats  did  cause 
the  noises,  then  how  came  the  captain  to  imagine 
spirits;  how  account  for  the  awe  in  the  captain's 

92 


REILLUSION 

mind  ?  Is  it  not  more  remarkable  that  he  should 
conceive  of  spirits  if  there  are  none,  than  if  they 
actually  exist?  It  is  true  the  superstition  may 
have  been  imported  from  another  mind;  but  that 
simply  transfers  the  problem  to  the  other  mind. 
Where  does  the  superstition  originally  come  from  ? 
It  cannot  matter  much  what  the  data  of  the  senses 
may  be  if  the  mind  is  free  to  read  that  data  in  its 
own  way. 

That  which  makes  you  and  me  discard  the 
crude  superstition  is  its  unreasonableness  in  the 
light  of  other  facts  which  have  led  to  more 
comprehensive  interpretations.  We  prefer  more 
refined  superstitions  that  we  have  not  yet  recog- 
nized as  such.  The  old  mythologies  were  not 
gratuitous  falsehoods,  not  capricious  fabrications. 
They  were  necessitated  outbursts  toward  truth. 
They  recognized  an  inner  actuality  in  nature  lost 
sight  of  in  more  recent  sceptical  processes  of 
reasoning.  Our  picture  of  nature  is  in  process  of 
evolution.  But  the  passing  bloom  of  early  im- 
pressions, the  glamour  that  vanishes  as  we  make 
the  outlines  more  clear-cut  and  strong,  has  not 
gone  forever.  Whatever  added  richness  or  charm 
to  the  beliefs  that  have  been  superseded  may  yet 
be  harmonized  with  our  present  conceptions  by 
knowledge  yet  to  come. 

The  fairies  are  not  dead;  they  have  only  been 
driven  from  their  former  homes.  When  men  pro- 
fessed to  have  discovered  the  truth,  when  they 
claimed  for  their  own  imaginations  the  authorship 

93 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

of  the  fairy  forms  which  they  perceived,  the  fairies 
withdrew.  The  forms  of  trees,  of  ferns,  of  flowers, 
and  of  animals  were  already  preoccupied.  Man- 
kind gave  himself  over  to  scientific  investigation, 
to  minute  examination,  to  the  exploring  of  the 
whole  length  and  breadth  of  the  natural  world. 
Now  and  then  some  illusory  charm  flashed 
through  his  brain,  some  lure  which  had  little  or 
no  relation  to  the  work  in  hand.  He  plodded  on, 
until  on  the  confines  of  science  he  found  the 
whole  journey  left  him  where  it  found  him.  This 
world  was  of  his  own  choosing.  That  one  celestial 
hint  discredited  it  all.  The  fairies  are  not  dead; 
they  have  but  retreated  to  a  more  congenial 
sphere. 

Why  has  the  blindness  of  materialism  clung  so 
persistently  to  modern  life.'*  You  hear  music  that 
revolutionizes  your  mood,  recalls  long-forgotten 
emotions  or  stirs  every  fibre  in  your  body  with 
a  fire  of  activity.  Afterwards  you  think  all  this 
was  the  physical  efl'ect  of  material  agencies.  Wine 
or  opium  has  done  as  much  for  some  men.  As  if 
these  agencies  were  not  the  merest  common  car- 
riers, as  if  opium  could  produce  a  vision,  where 
there  was  no  vision  to  be  produced.  As  if  you 
created  the  landscape  by  opening  the  window 
shutters.  The  tones  of  flute  or  violin  or  voice  of 
man  or  woman  have  little  or  no  existence  but  as 
they  rise  to  meet  a  living  need,  but  as  they  carry 
an  extra-material  meaning,  —  a  meaning  known 
only  by  the  heart,  understood  only  by  being  alive. 

94 


REILLUSION 

Whatever  is  beautiful  the  earth  strives  for. 
Here  and  there  the  cadence  of  some  song  —  the 
tones  perhaps  of  a  great  soprano  —  floats  us 
toward  the  shore  of  paradise.  What  would  we 
not  do  to  reproduce  these  moments !  What  would 
we  not  do  to  have  them  perpetually  renew  them- 
selves in  our  experience!  The  forms  we  love  best 
enjoy  already  a  s.ort  of  immortality.  The  Greek 
pillar  rises  in  countless  villages  and  cities  the 
world  over.  Our  study  and  art  is  to  combine  and 
preserve  the  finer  essence  in  outward  things. 

But  we  must  be  cautious  in  our  conclusions,  for 
beauty  thrives  in  evanescent  forms.  It  would  not 
be  so  potent  if  it  were  not  so  rare.  The  rosebud 
or  wave  crest  whose  beauty  is  loveliest  in  its  most 
transient  stage  reminds  us  that  the  happier  life  is 
short  and  pure.  Life  need  not  be  secure.  What 
care  we  for  its  pompous  stabilities.  Immortality 
exists  only  by  an  escape  from  Time. 

All  the  potency  of  imagination,  all  the  dream 
mystery  of  joy,  all  the  richness  in  the  universe 
is  contained  within  the  spirit;  and  our  varying 
shades  of  emotion,  our  awe  and  wonder,  our  hopes 
and  aspirations  are  inflowings  of  something  real. 
The  natural  universe  is  a  series  of  responses  to 
the  pulses  of  who  knows  what  fathomless  soul. 

Ill 

Scholars  may  well  have  learned  by  this  time, 
such  emphasis  has  been  laid  upon  the  point,  that 
persons  who  live  subjectively,  who  recognize  the 

95 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

authority  of  the  human  mind  as  primary,  and  the 
objects  about  which  the  mind  thinks  as  secondary, 
tend  to  disregard  those  factors  in  experience  which 
are  determined  in  and  by  the  external  world.  The 
thinker,  the  philosopher,  is  always  regarded  with 
a  certain  degree  of  distrust,  connoted  by  such 
characterizations  as  theorist,  visionary,  and  the 
like.  Any  one  suspected  of  belonging  in  this  cate- 
gory is  frequently  urged  to  look  into  the  world  to 
find  what  the  facts  actually  are.  But  if  the  phil- 
osopher looks  into  the  world  and  finds  every- 
where, even  from  the  remotest  corners  of  nature, 
reflected  the  light  of  some  mind,  he  soon  wishes 
to  get  his  knowledge  first  hand.  If  the  scientist 
takes  his  readings  from  the  face  of  nature  by  the 
light  of  his  mind,  the  primary  elements  of  the 
interpretation  exist  in  the  nature  of  conscious- 
ness, and  are  available  for  the  philosopher  too. 
But  also  he  yearns  for  a  union  with  the  deeper 
or  universal  mind  which  unites  these  interpreta- 
tions and  makes  them  real. 

While  much  of  our  experience  is  capable  of  a 
tolerably  exact  interpretation,  we  cannot  aff"ord 
to  ignore  the  unknown  or  mystic  side  of  facts.  As 
we  become  more  strict  in  our  judgments  we  be- 
come more  and  more  aware  of  the  pervasive  mys- 
tery, the  infinite  unknown  close  behind  all  that  is 
known.  But  more  than  this,  because  of  the  posi- 
tive nature  of  our  own  ideas,  our  own  activities 
and  decisions,  we  recognize  behind  each  concrete 
fact  is  lurking  something  intimately  associated 

96 


REILLUSION 

with  our  happiness.  A  gift  Is  a  gift  by  virtue  of  a 
spiritual  element.  No  physical  law  explains  the 
value  of  deference.  Our  calls,  our  congratula- 
tions, our  condolences,  all  our  amenities  are 
charged  with  a  non-physical  magnetism.  Hence 
there  comes  a  time  when  the  enquirer  gives  over 
studying  the  history  of  matter,  and  interests  him- 
self in  the  history  of  the  soul.  Matter  thenceforth 
becomes  a  language  only. 

Life,  as  we  know  It,  at  best  is  fragmentary. 
The  transiency  of  personal  happiness  gives  all 
life  a  visionary  tinge.  The  physical  continuity, 
the  temporal  continuity,  Is  subject  to  savage 
breaches.  Accidents  and  catastrophes  make  no 
account  of  the  visible  objects  we  love.  The  mind 
has  envisaged  the  world  in  cold,  impersonal 
abstractions,  frozen  Ideas,  mathematical  and  ex- 
act; but  the  heart  prefers  an  irrational  dream, 
if  only  it  is  warm.  It  has  no  interest  in  the  per- 
fection of  the  physical  law  which  brought  it  sor- 
row. Not  only  Is  the  soul  expressed  in  what  we 
call  waking  states,  but  also  in  dreams. 

We  find  that  dreams  have  space  and  time  as 
much  as  the  waking  state.  In  fact  a  dream  has  all 
the  factors  of  a  waking  state.  The  difference  Is 
that  waking  states  have  been  more  completely 
unified  by  the  mind,  and  the  breaks  between  one 
set  of  phenomena  and  another  have  been  subor- 
dinated to  those  universal  elements  with  which 
consciousness  has  found  that  facts  conform.  The 
unity  which  connects  dreams  with  one  another  or 

97 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

with  waking  moments  is  a  spiritual  unity,  its 
most  definite  ties  are  matters  of  sentiment. 
Beautiful  faces  recur  in  sleep  usually  with  the 
utmost  truth,  at  times  with  artistic  perfection. 
There  is  no  break  in  the  objects  or  associations 
of  love.  These  things  ride  at  ease  upon  the  turbu- 
lent waves  of  dreams,  which  completely  upset  the 
formality  or  continuity  of  space  and  time. 

Suppose  that  the  apostles  dreamed  so  vividly 
that  Christ  walked  upon  the  water  that  there  was 
no  difference  in  distinctness  between  the  dream- 
ing and  waking  state.  Suppose,  for  instance,  that 
Simon  Peter's  consciousness  passes  from  one  con- 
dition to  the  other  and  back  again.  It  would  soon 
become  apparent  that  the  laws  which  governed 
the  activity  of  phenomena  in  one  state  did  not 
govern  the  activity  of  phenomena  in  the  other. 
But  if  each  were  equally  real  seeming  during  its 
presence,  we  could  not  call  one  any  more  actual 
than  the  other. 

In  experience,  however,  a  series  of  states  of 
mind  clings  together  with  many  universal  ele- 
ments in  common,  and  these  states  are  broken  at 
regular  intervals  by  states  of  partial  conscious- 
ness in  which  come  the  dream  states,  for  the  most 
part  unrelated  to  one  another,  and  lacking  any 
rational  principles  for  their  order  and  behavior. 
Hence  we  call  those  states  which  cohere,  real  or 
actual,  and  those  fragmentary  bits  of  experience 
which  come  in  sleep,  or  float  detached  and  incon- 
sequent around  the  edges  of  waking  life,  unreal, 

98 


REILLUSION 

insubstantial,  or  Imaginary.  But  these  states  as 
I  have  said  are  often  permeated  by  a  spiritual 
unity.  There  is  no  reason  to  condemn  even  the 
wildest,  most  chaotic  dream  as  unmeaning  simply 
because  it  is  a  dream.  It  must  influence  us  or  not 
like  a  waking  state  according  to  its  merits.  There 
are  delicate  and  essential  hints  which  the  mind 
seems  incapable  of  grasping  when  broad  awake, 
and  day  dreams  are  a  sort  of  ante-chamber  where 
much  of  our  progress  is  originated.  In  our  fancies 
we  dream  out  the  drops  of  balm,  from  our  crude, 
distressing  experience.  At  night,  after  the  day's 
attempts  have  all  been  made,  and  the  results 
have  become  an  irrevocable  part  of  our  life,  hope 
gathers  the  golden  meanings  and  washes  them 
till  they  again  reflect  the  sky. 

The  whole  series  of  waking  states  in  the  light  of 
higher  ideals  are  fragmentary  and  irrational.  But 
more  than  this  our  particular  lives  are  prepara- 
tory and  provisional.  The  prophetic  vision  of  the 
future,  which  is  simply  the  lead  the  soul  must 
follow  in  its  growth,  is  always  visionary.  The 
highest  aims  of  mankind  must  necessarily  be  dim 
while  at  a  distance. 

We  cannot  afford  to  scorn  dreams.  It  is  their 
agency  often  which  brings  us  to  the  verge  of  the 
promised  land;  where  we  look  once  more  upon 
the  splendor  of  childhood.  But  howsoever  we 
yearn,  our  mortality  confronts  us  at  the  gateway 
of  realization.  As  distance  must  forever  be  dis- 
tant from  the  human  eye  nor  can  ever. become 

99 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

near,  however  much  we  travel  over  the  earth's 
surface  and  approach  objects  which  were  once 
distant,  so  also  the  essence  of  beauty  is  always 
beyond  our  reach.  The  distance  itself  is  sacred 
and  inviolable.  It  is  a  permanent  mystery,  born 
of  the  union  of  permanence  and  beauty.  We  may 
gaze  at  it  as  at  a  lovely  child,  but  the  parent  is 
immeasurably  more  distant.  Our  own  heart  tells 
us  as  we  grasp  at  each  happy  realization,  if  it  is 
attainable  it  cannot  be  my  original  imperious 
dream. 

Yet  there  are  deep  satisfactions  and  rich  joys. 
Nature  is  always  leading  us  on;  and  we  forget 
that  abject  adoration  with  which  we  lay  before 
the  altar  of  Beauty.  You  step  out  into  the  soft 
breezes  of  a  warm  autumn  day;  walk  where  the 
leaves  are  brightest;  there  is  a  sensuous  pleasure 
in  the  woodland  smells  and  the  colors  of  autumn 
foliage.  But  something  beyond  the  simple  pleas- 
ure came  with  the  pleasure.  At  times  the  deep 
richness  of  early  associations  is  found  among  the 
twilight  tones  and  shadows.  Sometimes  we  hear 
over  the  crest  of  the  next  hill  the  echoes  of  a  fairy 
festival,  on  the  next  instant  lost  to  the  wistful 
ear.  The  subtle  spirit  is  ever  stealing  about 
through  nature  peeping  at  us  here  and  there. 

All  these  natural  impressions  have  a  greater 
hold  upon  us  as  we  recognize  the  potency  with 
which  each  personal  glimpse  of  consciousness  is 
thrown.  The  intellectual  sphere  is  a  region  of 
extreme  joys.  We  find  paths  that  lead  on  and  on. 

lOO 


REILLUSION 

Sometimes  it  is  a  familiar  memory,  sometimes  an 
alien  gleam.  The  brain  is  stored  with  recollections 
which  group  themselves  by  inexplicable  affini- 
ties. Certain  eyes  suggest  the  distant  mountains. 
Early  dreams  relate  themselves  to  travels  into 
remote  countries.  Vivid  chance  impressions,  a 
tree,  a  painting,  an  entry,  a  bit  of  blue  sea  become 
associated  with  stimulating  or  fascinating  persons 
and  always  touch  the  same  chord. 

All  these  experiences  suggest  the  infinite  relat- 
edness  of  the  mind.  Those  impressions  which 
strike  a  deeper  note  may  perhaps  be  a  deeper 
part  of  our  experience,  shared  with  other  persons, 
sympathies  which  reinforce  one  another.  Those 
dreams  which  startle  and  rouse  us,  often  pro- 
phetic, at  least  in  the  light  of  sentiment,  are  so 
because  they  are  part  of  an  ideal  ritual,  habits  of 
long  standing,  in  the  intellectual  world.  And  the 
shock  of  recognition  comes  because  we  are  simply 
verifying  what  we  have  known  before. 

There  comes  at  last  a  time  when  the  most  exact 
truth  appears  like  a  fairy  story,  gives  us  the  same 
simple  wonder  that  a  miracle  would  have  given 
us  before.  And  as  the  daylight  of  ideas  shines 
brighter  the  witchery  is  not  dispelled,  but  rather 
we  recognize  that  it  also  is  reasonable.  The  state* 
of  reillusion  is  not  the  fostering  of  old  illusions, 
but  the  return  of  fulness  and  wonder  to  every 
sight,  sound,  smell,  or  taste,  to  every  impression, 
fiction,  and  dream.  It  is  not  that  the  fairies  come 
back.  The  fairies  were  never  seen,  that  was  their 

lOI 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

charm.  Realities  they  were  which  did  not  appear. 
It  is  that  the  fairy  quality  returns  to  nature,  the 
fairy  feeling  to  the  heart. 

Every  too  material  age  will  crumble  away  be- 
fore the  believers  in  witchery,  in  spirits,  and  in 
Gods.  But  when  clearer  light  pours  in,  these  in 
turn  prove  crude  gropings,  ministers  to  ideas 
which  have  been  familiar  to  the  simplest  child. 
Still  comes  the  morning  freshness  to  teach  us  the 
immortality  of  youth.  Nature  is  utterly  impera- 
tive. Life  surges  on,  and  while  it  flows  full  and 
strong  what  care  we  for  Greece  and  Rome.  The 
world  has  its  Parthenons  and  Shakespeares  but 
monumental  as  they  are,  they  are  but  monu- 
ments. We  thirst  for  what  is  immediate.  We  sus- 
pect Nature  has  let  slip  her  secret  somewhere 
and  hunt  industriously  for  the  lost  clue.  But  hers 
is  an  open  secret  published  to  all  the  world.  It  is 
the  universe  riding  here  before  our  eyes,  and  sing- 
ing in  our  ears.  We  blink  before  its  dazzling  light, 
we  falter  as  we  speak  its  impulses.  We  never 
know  that  we  always  know. 

The  life  we  see  breaks  on  the  crest  of  an  illim- 
itable ocean.  We  are  embarked  in  a  shallow  san- 
ity upon  this  sea.  Those  formulas,  those  codes, 
reasonings,  rules,  names,  all  the  expressions  which 
we  use  are  severed  in  our  experience  by  lapses  of 
oblivion  and  unconsciousness.  They  are  almost 
accidental  in  the  flow  of  life,  like  the  little  swirling 
eddies  of  a  vast,  sleek  tide.    We  take  up  such 

102 


REILLUSION 

reason  as  we  need-but  it  melts  as  ice  melts,  it  is 
gone  as  the  mist  is  gone.  Banker  and  broker, 
student  and  artisan,  even  among  the  actions 
which  they  understand  best  sink  momently  to 
an  exhaustless  cause.  The  stabilities  of  fact  give 
way  to  deeper  heavings ;  and  the  geology  of  intel- 
lect from  time  to  time  reveals  cycles  of  whose  arc 
we  had  no  surmise.  At  last  some  hint  tells  us 
the  slow  combustion  of  mortality  was  lighted, 
even  as  the  gleams  of  heaven  are  lighted,  at  Love's 
original  fire,  and  the  whole  Universe  burns. 


CHAPTER  VI 

IMMORTALITY 

Go  to  a  headland  where  a  deep  current  sweeps 
into  a  deeper  sea.  Beyond  its  eddies  is  one  un- 
swerving trend.  Even  so  the  waters  of  life,  mix- 
ing, merging,  in  mist  and  darkness,  or  lined  with 
sunlit  ripples,  seek  the  open  ocean. 

Life  breaks  up  periodically,  and  with  each 
break,  large  tracts  of  our  being  die.  From  the 
home  influences  we  go  to  school,  and  childhood's 
folklore  is  given  up.  From  school  to  college,  from 
college  to  the  world,  each  is  a  form  of  death. 
Habits  and  customs  contain  us,  hem  in  our  vital- 
ity, and  become  deeply  associated  with  what  we 
mean  by  self.  When  these  habits  and  customs  are 
gone,  much  of  what  we  felt  to  be  self  is  stripped 
away.  But  for  a  healthy  soul  all  these  transitions 
are  as  the  smaller  current  flowing  into  the  larger, 
not  a  loss  but  a  gain. 

Death  is  a  phantom.  What  can  we  know  of  an 
absolute  end?  In  its  nature  it  is  unknowable,  an 
unbroken,  dreamless  rest.  If  consciousness  lingers 
after  what  we  call  death,  that  consciousness  has 
not  suffered  death.  All  that  we  think  of  in  or  near 
the  fading  hours  lies  in  a  twilight,  the  facts 
shrouded  by  approaching  darkness.    The  objec- 

104 


IMMORTALITY 

live  manifestation,  the  disintegration  of  the  body, 
absorbs  the  powers  of  imagination.  We  are  alarmed 
by  the  break  in  nature,  or  the  pain  attendant 
upon  so  many  forms  of  dissolution. 

We  have  a  vast  weight  of  superstition  to  over- 
come. But  all  these  fearful  imaginings  are  the 
work  of  the  mind.  The  skull  and  cross-bones,  the 
spectre,  the  gruesome  or  hypnotic  conceptions, 
as  in  the  picture  of  Dead  Island,  or  in  Homer's 
strange  and  beautiful  narrative  of  Odysseus' 
journey  to  the  other  world,  and  all  the  imagery 
and  symbolism  are  a  product  of  life  —  life  as  it 
faces  the  mighty  phantom,  as  it  yields  itself  to 
fear,  or  struggles  in  pain  and  grief.  Nothing  posi- 
tive can  be  said  of  death.  For  there  is  nothing 
positive  about  it.  We  can  only  assure  ourselves 
of  what  death  is  not.  We  can  but  prune  away 
false  notions. 

Yet  the  fact  that  this  nothingness  cuts  athwart 
our  whole  temporal  life  brings  the  problem  of  im- 
mortality home  to  every  living  thing.  Is  there 
an  inevitable  negative  which  cuts  off  the  individ- 
ual self  from  the  deathless,  universal  truth  .f* 

The  problem  of  death  brings  all  mankind  into 
sympathy.  We  build  and  build,  in  the  family,  in 
society,  in  nationality,  structures  which  we  vainly 
hope  will  last.  The  human  elements  are  so  pre- 
cious. Friendship  and  affection  are  all  in  all.  How 
can  these  be  at  the  mercy  of  poison  and  chance 
or  accident,  of  decease  and  age.'*   Yet  the  laws  of 

105 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

termination  are  utterly  inexorable.  The  heart  is 
ever  crying  to  know  more. 

For  this  reason  those  who  have  suffered,  unless 
withheld  by  rigid  scepticism,  are  ever  wishing  to 
grope  into  futurity.  The  same  tendency  which 
leads  us  to  evoke  a  spectre  in  the  name  of  death, 
leads  us  to  imagine  a  continuation  of  our  own 
temporal  or  mortal  history  beyond  the  temporal 
event  of  death.  Literature  is  full  of  projections 
of  this  life  upon  the  curtain  of  the  unknown. 
Some  of  us  have  our  own  ghosts.  And  can  there 
be  any  one  who  has  not  felt  the  influence  of  the 
spirit  world?  If  only  in  literature,  we  yet  know  of 
such  vivid  realities  as  Hamlet's  ghost.  We  have 
half  believed  or  wholly  believed  in  a  personal 
actuality  communicating  with  us  from  the  twi- 
light zone.  Yet  only  to  the  power  of  the  imagina- 
tion is  this  a  testimony.  Could  we  look  behind  the 
curtain,  we  should  not  find  even  the  scurrying 
of  rats. 

There  may  be  communication  with  the  dead, 
but  if  there  is,  we  have  no  way  of  distinguishing 
it  from  the  activities  of  memory.  If  a  friend  who 
has  died  appears  to  you,  you  have  no  way  to  be 
sure  it  is  he  but  by  memory.  If  he  appears  in  new 
surroundings,  he  has  not  returned  to  this  earth. 
If  he  tells  of  events  unknown  to  you  which  you 
later  verify,  it  is  rather  evidence  of  thought 
transference  from  some  living  mind  attributed 
by  your  dream-thought  to  him,  than  evidence  of 
any  new  activity  on  his  part.    Indeed,  suppose  a 

io6 


IMMORTALITY 

dream  so  vivid  and  continuous  that  you  have  all 
the  reality  of  a  new  set  of  experiences  with  your 
dead  friend,  a  new  and  fresh  intercourse,  it  can 
still  be  the  work  of  your  memory.  Upon  awaking 
and  finding  that  his  body  is  no  longer  of  this  earth, 
you  can  have  no  possible  way  of  appraising  the 
event  or  naming  its  cause. 

It  is  not  that  there  is  any  prohibitive  reason 
why  we  should  not  receive  impressions  from  per- 
sonalities which  are  actually  living,  after  they 
have  passed  the  point  of  death.  It  is  simply  that 
such  manifestations  appear  to  be  unprovable  and 
also  unimportant.  The  dead  do  not  guide  us 
ihrough  revolutions,  or  if  they  do  it  Is  by  the 
influence  of  their  intelligible  imprint  left  In  the 
world  before  they  died.  They  do  not  write  epics 
or  paint  pictures  or  solve  scientific  problems. 
They  do  none  of  the  characteristic  things  which 
make  them  what  they  are  to  us  while  living. 
Obviously,  except  In  cases  whose  causes  are 
already  determined,  they  could  not  foretell  future 
events,  because  we  are  ourselves  free  to  make 
future  events. 

The  Influence  of  each  personality  Is  printed  on 
the  world  as  the  tones  of  a  voice  are  printed  on  a 
graphophone  record.  And  as  the  echo  Is  released 
at  times  and  takes  eff"ect  In  the  world,  so  from 
the  face  of  the  world  or  from  the  impressions  in 
the  memory  the  personal  influences  of  bygone 
days  again  and  again  are  set  reechoing. 

Whether  or  not,  among  the  many  unexplained 
107 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

influences  upon  our  lives  there  are  some  which 
emanate  from  new  activities  in  the  life  of  those 
who  have  gone,  we  cannot  tell.  Nor  is  it  easy  to 
believe  the  question  concerns  us  deeply.  The 
dead  never  come  back  and  appeal  directly  to  the 
reason  with  new  arguments  for  their  continued 
existence.  The  life  which  they  have  already  lived 
is  sacred.  We  do  not  wish  it  desecrated  by  one 
false  word.  May  we  not  suppose  the  soul  has  in  a 
lifetime  enough  use  of  this  mortal  mode  of  ex- 
pression, and  that  is  why  we  die.'*  All  that  we  love 
comes  through  this  medium;  all  that  we  love  can 
come  through  it  no  longer.  Is  not  the  memory 
the  holiest  link  that  later  on  will  ever  connect  us 
with  this  vision  of  each  other  which  now  is  all 
that  an  earthly  life  can  give^ 

Earthly  life  —  but  what  do  we  mean  by  this-f* 
We  know  too  well  the  provisional  and  fragmen- 
tary nature  of  our  little  existence  here,  to  believe 
there  is  no  larger  sphere  impermeated  by  a  more 
wakeful  life.  Why,  the  very  sense  of  its  inade- 
quacy subordinates  this  visible  world  to  the  cry 
of  the  soul.  Indeed  our  discontent  could  only 
come  from  an  innate  knowledge  of  a  brighter 
reality.  He  is  a  poor  student  of  his  own  conscious- 
ness who  cannot  see  that  life  is  immortal.  The 
immortal  nouns  of  thought  imply  an  immortal 
thinker.  The  life  of  ideas  goes  ringing  on  through 
the  universe  forever.  They  are  utterly  beyond  the 
reach  of  death. 

io8 


IMMORTALITY 

But  the  immortality  which  the  intellect  admits 
seems,  at  first  sight  anyway,  cold  and  impersonal. 
The  little  self  within  has  other  and  nearer  inter- 
ests. What  intimacy  have  you  or  I  with  the 
heaven  of  ideas  ?  If  these  great  truths  were  beauti- 
ful, if  they  enraptured  us  in  our  finer  moments, 
we  received  no  promise  from  them  as  to  hearth 
and  home. 

The  ideas  have  many  forms  of  continuity.  In 
the  first  place  they  have  given  their  own  immor- 
tality to  the  material  essences  of  this  world.  The 
circulation  of  the  elements  about  the  planet 
exhibits  an  equilibrium  which  we  translate  as  an 
endless  system  of  cycles.  Even  if  the  world  is 
cooling  down  we  believe  the  astronomical  cycles 
follow  self-similar  laws  forever.  The  chemical 
atoms  persist  through  successive  transformations. 
Thus  the  material  of  the  body  is  never  annihi- 
lated. 

But  this  cold  permanence  in  matter  gives  slight 
consolation  to  the  individual  self.  The  cycles 
interest  us  only  as  they  afi"ect  consciousness.  The 
perpetually  renewing  seasons,  which  give  the 
return  of  spring  after  the  deathlike  phase  of 
winter,  come  closer  to  the  personal  problem.  The 
cycles  of  nature  reflect  the  cycles  of  mental  states. 

Now  a  life,  to  be  life,  must  change  or  at  any  rate 
know  change.  Yet  how  can  things  change  forever 
or  change  at  all  and  yet  be  immortal?  Evidently 
an  element  of  change  belongs  to  all  particular 
things,  and  this  element  of  change  is  an  evidence 

109 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

of  mortality  in  them.  If,  however,  a  change  is 
but  a  cycle  or  period,  the  relation  of  a  part  of  the 
cycle  to  its  recurrence  may  explain  our  difficulty. 
The  circulation  of  material  elements  suggests  the 
periodicity  of  moods.  Our  memories  will  not  come 
back  to  us  on  some  days,  whereas  on  others  they 
return  with  startling  freshness.  We  pass  through 
cycles  of  experience  and  frequently  find  ourselves 
traversing  familiar  ground. 

An  element  of  sameness,  an  element  of  change, 
go  together  to  make  up  all  life.  Yet  the  element 
of  change  itself  has  a  sort  of  immortality,  for  in 
its  application  to  particular  life  it  is  universal. 
This  thought  suggests  that  the  whole  of  life  is 
immortal  when  viewed  from  the  standpoint  of 
ideas,  and  mortal  only  when  viewed  from  the 
standpoint  of  particulars.  We  can  see  how  in  the 
infinite  activity  of  change  exists  the  possibility 
that  everything  which  ever  has  been  or  ever  can 
be  in  the  universe  shall  recur. 

The  theory,  however,  of  an  absolute  recurrence 
due  to  a  complete  cycle  in  which  experience  begins 
to  relive  itself  when  the  cycle  is  ended,  and  repro- 
duces each  successive  passage  of  the  cycle  exactly 
point  for  point,  means  nothing.  For  if  two  cycles 
were  identical  in  every  particular  they  could  have 
no  knowledge  of  each  other,  they  must  coincide  ab- 
solutely, and  two,  ten,  or  an  infinity  of  them  would 
be  no  different  from  one.  Imagining  them  end  to 
end  means  no  more  than  imagining  them  all  going 
on  at  once. 

no 


IMMORTALITY 

The  desirability  of  the  recurrence  of  an  experi- 
ence rests  upon  the  need  that  each  recurrence 
shall  be  under  at  least  slightly  altered  circum- 
stances. We  have  no  wish  for  an  absolute  recur- 
rence. Even  when  we  imagine  that  we  wish  an 
identical  reproduction  of  a  sensation,  we  are 
deluded ;  we  wish  that  sensation  enhanced  by  the 
after  knowledge  that  it  was  worthy  to  be  repeated. 
We  never  really  want  back  the  ignorance  which 
a  state  of  innocence  would  imply.  The  love  of 
innocence  is  really  the  love  of  health.  If  our 
receptive  organs  are  healthy,  it  is  a  gain  to  have 
our  memory  alive. 

The  theory  of  recurrence  gains  vitality  from 
the  spiral  tendency  of  our  progress.  We  come 
back  over  the  same  part  of  the  field,  but  higher 
up.  And  as  the  course  of  the  earth  through  the 
aether  is  a  spiral  by  virtue  of  the  progress  of  the 
solar  system  toward  the  constellation  Hercules, 
so  the  sweep  of  a  man's  personal  thought  is  car- 
ried on  by  the  progress  of  the  society  to  which  he 
belongs. 

There  is  another  side  to  this  question  which  the 
continuity  of  matter  suggests.  This  is  the  immor- 
tality or  approximation  to  immortality  of  the 
race  line.  Riding  on  the  impersonal  flux  of  ma- 
terial elements  is  the  continuity  of  the  self  through 
children.  The  self  goes  on  and  on.  The  terrific 
power  of  the  reproductive  impulse  would  lead  us 
to  believe  that  nature  holds  all  continuity  cheap 
beside  this.  Yet  the  nobler  souls  among  us  plough 

III 


CYCLES    OF    PERSONAL    BELIEF 

themselves  Into  their  work,  and  their  sympathies 
and  influence  spread  and  grow;  carrying  the  seeds 
of  their  personality  far  beyond  the  range  of  their 
immediate  contact.  The  character  of  a  man  is 
lost  among  his  descendants  in  a  few  generations; 
but  the  character  of  a  genius,  his  behavior  and 
deeds,  are  reproduced  for  centuries. 

We  may  be  certain  that  life  is  immortal.  It 
cannot  be  so  mad  and  irrational  a  dream  as  that 
all  this  hot  reality  be  subject  to  the  accidents, 
the  destruction,  the  mortality  which  we  perceive. 
The  ideas  give  us  a  perfect  assurance  of  immor- 
tality. Yet  however  sure  may  be  our  confidence, 
the  question  which  haunts  us  is.  What  stake  does 
the  self  have  in  this?  What  is  our  relation  to  the 
immortal  ideal? 

That  which  keeps  us  wondering,  that  which 
keeps  alive  the  restless  questioning  is  the  /.  What 
am  I  ?  Where  do  I  come  from  ?  Where  shall  /  go  ? 

If  we  take  the  analogy  of  incandescent  lamps 
in  an  electric  circuit,  we  may  see  the  difficulty  of 
delimiting  the  self.  Where  is  the  self  of  the  elec- 
tric light?  If  you  smash  a  bulb,  the  combination 
of  current,  wire,  and  vacuum  which  gave  that 
particular  light  is  annihilated,  but  the  potential 
current  is  still  alive.  With  a  new  bulb  virtually 
the  exact  circumstances  could  be  reproduced. 

Thus  also  the  self  derives  its  vitality  from  some- 
thing far  deeper  than  the  body  can  explain;  but 
at  what  point  and  how  this  vitality  dips  into  the 

112 


IMMORTALITY 

physical  medium  we  cannot  by  any  means  ascer- 
tain. We  understand  the  self  best  by  its  own 
experiences.  We  are  impotent  spectators  by  the 
deathbed  of  another,  understanding  what  we  do 
understand  only  through  our  hearts.  The  self 
finds  itself  immersed  in  the  moving  current  of 
time,  but  time  as  an  experience  varies  always 
with  what  it  contains. 

We  know  not  what  our  experience  may  be  in 
the  gradual  slowing-up  of  time.  If  death  is  a 
sleep,  it  is  the  last  moments  before  death  wherein 
the  glimpse  of  immortality  may  come.  The  fatal 
fact  approaches  the  awaiting  consciousness.  It  is 
the  moment  of  complete  annihilation  for  the  self 
—  beyond  the  moment,  eternal  life.  If  time  or  the 
experience  of  time  ceases  altogether,  the  soul 
rests.  Has  it  then  merged  with  God?  Has  the 
individual  at  some  moment  in  the  running  cur- 
rent, which  the  rest  of  the  world  perceives, 
stepped  out  of  time:  even  in  that  moment  before 
the  sense  of  self  has  gone  forever.^ 

So  far  as  we  can  conceive  the  nature  of  dura- 
tion, there  is  infinite  possibility  in  the  millionth 
of  a  second,  or  in  any  fraction  of  time  however 
small.  Heaven  may  float  into  individual  life  upon 
any  infinitesimal  scrap  of  time;  but  of  these  last 
seconds,  until  one  passes  through  them  he  cannot 
know. 

Speculation  as  to  the  last  experience  of  indi- 
vidual consciousness  is  utterly  futile.  As  sickness 
and  torpor  crowd  into  the  body,  the  self  retreats. 

"3 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

Sitting  beside  a  deathbed,  watching  the  last  hours 
of  unconsciousness  before  death  actually  arrives, 
it  may  appear  that  something  momentous  is  go- 
ing on,  some  great  experience,  something  utterly 
beyond  our  comprehension,  yet  real  and  actual 
for  the  soul  that  we  love.  But  if  this  is  so,  the 
body  can  but  dimly  reflect  the  truth.  We  have 
in  that  deathlike  sleep  no  clue.  It  is  the  hours  of 
most  vivid  life  which  teach  us  more.  It  is  in  the 
exaltation  of  striving,  it  is  in  the  wakefulness  of 
perfect  health,  that  we  understand  best  the  ir- 
repressible onward  sweep  of  an  existence  which 
cannot  end. 

If  death  is  a  sleep,  what  is  the  significance  of  the 
analogy  of  dreams.^   Do  we  wake  at  death .^ 

When  unconsciousness  becomes  complete,  time 
ceases.  If  the  self  shares  the  indestructibility  of 
life,  enormous  stretches  of  time  mean  nothing  to 
it  so  long  as  its  sleep  is  absolute.  The  passage  of 
time,  as  measured  by  the  law-abiding  cycles  of 
the  world,  or  by  the  waking  experience  of  indi- 
viduals, means  nothing  to  the  sleeper.  If  you  die 
and  sink  to  an  absolute  rest,  the  duration  of  your 
sleep  is  irrelevant  to  you.  If  you  are  to  maintain 
your  identity  in  a  future  waking  state,  there  can 
be  no  difl'erence  for  you  between  beginning  to  live 
instantly  upon  death  or  waiting  till  time  has 
passed  away,  and  then  finding  yourself  alive.  The 
experience  is  instantaneous  in  either  case.  If  at 
death  our  experience  continues  temporal,  then 

114 


IMMORTALITY 

the  length  of  our  sleep  matters  only  if  the  terms 
and  conditions  of  this  life  have  any  reality  which 
will  persist  after  death. 

If  this  be  a  dream  from  which  we  wake,  and 
these  but  dream  figures  among  whom  we  live, 
wife,  child,  and  friends  insubstantial  shadows 
even  like  the  creations  of  our  night  dreams,  and 
our  whole  circumstance,  our  bodies,  our  world 
unreal,  we  must  rest  equally  assured  that  these 
same  dream  figures  are  based  on  real  figures, 
these  insubstantial  shadows  are  cast  by  real 
beings,  and  the  wife  and  child  whom  we  love  in 
the  dream,  are  based  upon  the  actualities  of  the 
beyond,  even  as  our  night  dreams  are  simply 
fragments  of  the  life  of  day.  There  would  be  no 
waiting  for  the  dream  figure  of  this  life  to  die 
before  we  could  meet  again. 

This  analogy,  however,  should  not  mislead  us, 
for  there  are  realities  in  our  lives  which  will 
always  be  real.  There  Is  an  element  in  our  love 
which  would  lead  us  back  to  earth,  if  life  went  on 
without  it  after  death. 

But  prejudices  from  near-sightedness  have 
great  tenacity.  We  are  so  presumptuous  in  our 
scanty  world.  How  little  thought  we  take  of  time. 
Conceive  the  period  of  man's  evolution  from  the 
cave-dweller  till  now,  say  two  hundred  thousand 
years  more  or  less.  What  is  this. ^  How  long  has 
Arcturus  been  evolving  planets,  and  what  of  the 
illimitable  space  beyond.?  Are  we  earth-born 
creatures  alone  in  this  gigantic  universe?    In  all 

IIS 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

the  infinity  of  time,  are  we  the  trifling  result? 
How  faint  the  possibility  that  we  are  without  an 
audience  of  superior  beings,  an  audience  to  our 
secret  thoughts  and  deeds.  How  little  chance 
that  vibrations  unknown  to  us  are  not  interpreted 
elsewhere,  or  in  a  sphere  we  cannot  appreciate 
whether  far  or  near. 

If  the  ants  reasoned,  they  might  learn  to  under- 
stand the  natural  laws,  just  as  we  understand 
them,  and  yet  not  be  able  to  perceive  the  activi- 
ties of  human  will  as  distinct  from  other  manifesr 
tations  obeying  natural  law.  We  do  not  break 
the  law  of  gravity  when  we  move.  Ants  might 
conclude  that  we  were  as  unconscious  as  we  con- 
sider the  moon  or  the  clouds.  We  may  not  yet 
have  learned  to  distinguish  the  agency  of  person- 
alities which  we  do  not  understand  and  their 
influence  upon  us,  from  the  agency  of  more 
remote  and  more  divine  natural  law.  We  are 
wholly  incompetent  to  pronounce  upon  these 
questions  either  one  way  or  the  other. 

It  is  narrow  and  unreasonable  to  suppose  there 
is  necessarily  no  intervention  in  our  lives  by  a 
will  or  wills  superior  to  our  own.  As  we  watch 
over  a  sleeping  child,  and  if  he  is  restless  and 
uncomfortable,  perhaps  move  him  or  shift  his 
covering,  so  our  own  mortal  sleep  may  be  watched 
over.  And  of  these  things  at  death  we  may  or 
may  not  know. 

If  there  is  a  guardian  consciousness,  we  err 
greatly  in  seeking  to  understand  its  nature  by 

ii6 


IMMORTALITY 

projecting  the  circumstances  and  conditions  of 
this  world  into  the  beyond.  The  other  world  can 
scarcely  be  what  we  almost  invariably  try  to 
conceive  it,  an  extension  of  this;  but  rather  this 
world  is  an  extension  of  that.  The  realities  here 
derive  their  cogency  from  something  greater  than 
we  now  appreciate.  Certainly  with  all  our  petty 
idolatries,  our  abnegation  of  holier  sentiments, 
our  wavering  hold  upon  ideas,  we  may  be  sure 
that  what  is  sterling  and  genuine  in  this  earthly 
experience  gets  its  character  and  worth  from  some 
more  universal  source  than  what  we  call  the  world. 

Impersonal  immortality  inevitably  seems  cold. 
Those  elements  of  which  alone  the  understanding 
can  be  sure,  give  little  promise  of  warmth.  In  the 
presence  of  the  deathless  truth  the  heart  covertly 
pictures  a  heaven  of  particular  objects  where  it 
may  again  find  what  is  most  dear. 

Then  beauty  is  so  commanding:  little  melodies 
that  in  some  hour  of  unusual  susceptibility  be- 
witched and  yet  emancipated  the  heart,  what  has 
become  of  them  when  the  tones  are  gone.^  Little 
incidents  link  our  days  together  by  some  secret 
bond.  On  a  winter's  day  a  door  swinging,  by 
chance,  complains  in  just  the  tone  of  a  catbird. 
Even  the  suggestion  of  that  swamp-note  recalls 
warm  bushes,  woody  fragrance,  and  little  rustling 
evidences  of  life.  It  is  the  immortal  voice  of 
Nature.  Beauty  lives  on  and  on,  and  rides  like  a 
fairy  queen  on  all  these  transient  vehicles.    Yet 

117 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

within  the  natural  sounds  is  a  cry.  Rifts  in  nature 
let  through  the  glimpse  of  a  foreign  sphere.  The 
soul  yearns  toward  the  beyond.  The  world  shrinks 
before  this  instinct.  All  we  know  is  not  enough. 
Ah,  if  we  could  be  aetherized  by  the  ozone  of  the 
summer  night!  If  we  could  die  thus,  and  dying 
pass  oif  into  that  mysterious  direction  toward 
which  the  wild  sympathy  of  nature  draws,  how 
rich  a  fulfilment  were  death. 

But  we  are  always  at  the  mercy  of  instincts 
which  may  refer  to  future  episodes  in  our  life 
here.  All  premonition  is  bound  by  this  condi- 
tion; and  as  a  personal  problem  we  do  not  know 
whether  the  unknown  term  in  the  equation  of  life 
is  reached  by  an  evolution  of  the  known  terms,  or 
whether  the  alien  spirit  is  to  be  wooed  and  won 
in  a  newness  hidden  from  us  by  the  veil  of  death. 

Love  is  so  tenacious  of  evanescent  particulars. 
In  the  brilliant  hall  where  near  a  thousand  men 
and  women  are  dancing,  will  the  lover  find  the 
girl  whose  eyes,  near  him  but  some  hours  since, 
reflected  the  firelight?  Here  in  the  larger  sphere, 
the  grander  unity,  each  particular  personality 
seems  lost,  swallowed  in  the  maze  and  whirl.  Yet 
all  the  occasion  can  off"er  him  of  real  life  is  that 
he  should  see  one  face :  the  tide  of  life  too  full  for 
questioning  when  she  is  near. 

The  problem  for  the  personal  consciousness,  for 
that  thing  we  call  self,  has  no  conclusion.  Such 
considerations  as  are  pertinent  teach  only  the  dis- 

ii8 


IMMORTALITY 

cipline  of  the  wishes.  If  we  must  have  a  solution 
for  the  individual,  it  is  that  he  should  entrust 
himself  to  the  great  power  known  as  Love.  The 
self  is  but  a  wandering  spark.  Particulars  are 
constantly  winnowed  away.  Progress  may  come 
through  the  sleep  of  all  that  may  be  called  self, 
and  all  our  life  be  the  evolution  of  universal  tend- 
encies, riding  upon  a  series  of  shifting  and  renew- 
ing selves. 

What  if  this  thought  is  all  the  immortality  you 
have!  Only  as  you  have  sent  this  thought  into  the 
ages,  perhaps,  shall  your  life  continue.  Does  it 
so  much  matter,  if  you  truly  love.^*  We  are  pre- 
paring our  immortality  by  our  words  and  deeds, 
here  and  now.  We  abandon  self  gradually  by  our 
sympathy  and  understanding;  transfer  our  indi- 
viduality to  others  by  the  fusing  devotion  of  the 
heart. 

Throwing  self  outward  awakens  the  everlasting 
life  within.  The  swallows  that  we  love  are  not  the 
symbol  and  metaphor  of  thought  but  our  thought 
itself.  We  share  one  life.  The  criminals  and  out- 
casts are  ourselves,  and  by  this  they  are  recog- 
nized and  understood  and  finally  metamorphosed. 
There  is  no  altogether  foreign  soul,  nor  can  there 
be  such,  in  the  universe. 

There  may  at  last  come  a  time  when  we  feel  the 
unity  of  self  with  what  is  universal,  and  say,  not 
*  Where  did  I  come  from.^  Where  shall  I  go?' 
but,  *How  came  I  here?  Why  am  I  not  at  home? 
How  came  I  to  be  divided  into  fragments,  and 

119 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

harassed  and  embarrassed  with  strange  particu- 
lars?' This  deeper  understanding,  this  deeper 
sympathy  would  still  the  insistent  murmur  that 
immortality  without  love  were  nothing,  mortality 
with  love  were  all.  The  universal  spirit  is  not 
heartless.  It  is  the  author  of  heat.  It  has  thrown 
the  ideas  out  to  conquer  the  cold.  They  are  not 
cold  themselves. 

Immortality  is  the  continuance  of  life,  not  over 
a  particular  span  of  time,  but  as  something  which 
is  perpetually  renewing  itself  as  a  permanent 
force,  or  an  inexhaustible  fountain.  With  death 
we  have  nothing  to  do.  For  the  conscious  self 
death  is  always  in  the  future,  and  as  the  future 
is  imaginary,  so  also  is  death. 

The  aspirations  which  even  in  their  inception 
enrich  our  lives,  begetting  visions  of  happiness, 
are  included  in  one  illimitable  present  moment; 
one  present  moment  which  also  contains,  in  its 
copious  actuality,  all  of  those  elements  of  the 
past  which  we  have  loved.  Our  habit  of  trans- 
lating change  by  reference  to  our  linear  percep- 
tions obscures  the  truth  that  the  present  moment 
is  one  divine,  transcendent  Unity.  Change  is 
simply  the  metre  of  our  efforts  to  reach  out  into 
it,  and  grasp  its  abundant  truth. 

Success  may  come  by  hardship,  by  genuine 
effort,  by  sacrifice.  Nature  responds  with  unex- 
pected transformations.  Our  sterile  activities 
bud  with  roses,  the  murky  doubts  are  flooded 
with  an  incalculable  sunrise.    The  most  potent 

1 20 


IMMORTALITY 

magic  is  in  the  faces  we  love.  Hope  comes  not 
from  exploring  into  that  which  is  alien,  but  by 
a  return  nearer  home.  The  act  of  giving  brings 
us  hither.  Every  flush  of  beauty  is  a  test,  every 
danger  an  opportunity. 

The  soul  needs  no  assurances  in  the  beyond, 
needs  no  justification  of  its  existence.  It  is  care- 
less of  immortality,  it  is  too  happy  to  care.  For 
the  soul  is  in  its  nature  noble  and  sacrificial,  it 
exists  to  be  spent.  "He  that  loses  his  life  for  my 
sake  shall  find  it."  It  is  not  that  the  soul  goes 
through  a  pretense  of  death  knowing  that  life  is 
on  the  other  side.  The  soul  does  not  know.  It 
knows  only  God,  and  the  internal  law  of  its  na- 
ture, which  is  to  give,  give  and  always  give.  Were 
it  not  for  human  weakness,  were  the  soul  pure,  it 
would  work  in  the  dark,  unknown  and  unrecog- 
nized forever;  or  it  would  die  an  utter  and  abso- 
lute death,  if  by  so  doing  it  could  give  a  perma- 
nent happiness  to  another  which  it  loved. 

If  one  is  not  prepared  to  enter  an  absolute 
sleep,  to  end,  to  cease  to  be;  or  if  one  is  not  prei 
pared  to  forego  all  recognition,  all  praise,  all 
fame,  his  soul  is  not  pure.  Therefore  it  is  that 
mortality  within  us  is  purged  by  self-denial.  To 
face  death  and  dissolution  is  life.  To  seek  the 
elimination  of  all  death  by  cultivating  one's  com- 
fort and  security  is  itself  a  kind  of  death.  There- 
fore it  is  that  the  soul  knows  no  death. 


PART  IV 

CONCLUSION 


CHAPTER  VII 

CONCLUSION 

Life  is  a  play  of  light  and  shadow,  following 
nameless  and  unpredictable  sequences.  We  know 
little  enough  what  our  words  mean.  The  truth 
when  we  think  we  have  expressed  it  most  nearly 
turns  out  to  be  but  the  outpouring  of  a  mood. 
The  mood  is  all.  The  day,  the  hour,  the  second's 
flash  of  vision  rules,  and  when  the  passion  has 
gone,  life  is  idle  like  a  ship  becalmed  at  sea. 

"Everything  in  the  universe  goes  by  indirec- 
tion" —  a  fact  which  gradually  teaches  the  writer 
a  certain  wariness  of  assertion.  All  words  have  a 
kick  to  them.  A  man  criticises  only  that  which  is 
in  his  own  nature.  If  I  am  selfish,  I  see  selfishness. 
If  I  am  impure,  I  see  impurity;  and  so  on.  A  man's 
true  opinion  faithfully  represents  himself.  The 
strict  analysis  of  the  present  day  arises,  of  course, 
from  a  strictly  analytic  turn  of  mind  in  the  race. 
A  prurient  and  mechanical  description  of  biology, 
of  conduct,  of  the  human  brain,  are  the  exact 
description  of  him  who  thus  describes.  His  view 
of  nature  and  account  of  it  faithfully  portray  the 
man.  So  with  our  friends,  we  cannot  see  the  mote 
in  our  brother's  eye  without  there  be  a  mote  in 
our  own.  Our  criticism  of  the  world  is  the  world's 
criticism  of  us.    You  tend  to  quarrel  with  your 

125 


CYCLES     OF    PERSONAL     BELIEF 

friend  just  to  the  extent  of  your  own  pride  and 
selfishness,  not  to  the  extent  of  his.  With  a  saint 
you  will  magnify  all  his  faults  to  the  proportion 
of  your  own.  With  a  sinner  you  will  tend  to  ignore 
or  make  light  of  his  faults  to  the  measure  of  your 
own  innocence. 

Thus  experience  is  equivocal.  We  are  praised 
for  facing  difficulties  after  they  have  ceased  to  be 
difficulties  and  we  begin  to  take  credit  for  our 
sloth.  One  never  knows  his  own  virtue.  He  who  is 
conscious  of  his  own  merit  loses  it,  and  paradoxi- 
cally we  talk  about  those  things  which  we  do  not 
possess.  The  man  who  has  ideals  in  his  heart 
talks  materialism.  And  he  who  is  a  materialist 
at  heart  is  usually  talking  ideals;  but  ideas  shine 
in  the  materialistic  symbolism;  the  materialist 
heart  cannot  make  the  talk  of  ideals  ring  true. 
Similarly  the  less  a  man  thinks  of  himself,  the 
more  proof  that  the  scope  of  his  vision  is  wide; 
the  more  he  thinks  of  self,  the  smaller  the  scope 
of  what  he  sees  outside  himself;  for  each  one  of  us 
is  iniinitesimally  small  in  the  eye  of  the  universe. 

If  one  is  asked  what  ethical  conclusion,  what 
practical  result  his  beliefs  or  speculations  as  to 
the  foundation  of  belief  lead  to,  this  equivocal 
aspect  of  life  gives  him  pause.  The  cynicisms  and 
insincerities  of  society  have  some  justification, 
and  the  man  who  attempts  to  outline  his  ethics 
finds  himself  like  some  wayfarer  caught  in  a 
quagmire  lifting  one  foot  out  only  by  sinking 
the  other  deeper  in. 

126 


CONCLUSION 

Our  ethical  beliefs  are  immersed  in  historical 
particulars.  As  every  story  needs  its  own  setting, 
so  every  problem  has  its  individual  peculiarities. 
We  set  our  swirling  hieroglyphics  upon  the  stream 
of  life.  Only  a  little  path  in  the  current  bears  our 
imprint.  The  response  we  make  to  a  few  calls 
or  challenges  stamps  us  for  what  we  are.  From 
what  we  do  the  principles  which  govern  us  are 
interpreted. 

The  cycle  in  our  beliefs  which  is  indicated  by 
Illusion,  Disillusion,  and  Reillusion,  is  followed 
in  our  experience  by  another  which  might  be 
designated  as  Generation,  Degeneration,  and 
Regeneration.  We  come  out  of  the  intellectual 
crisis  which  renewed  within  us  the  spirit  of  belief, 
endowed  with  a  philosophy  of  life.  Upon  this  we 
found  a  code  of  morals.  We  believe  we  know  how 
to  meet  the  world,  but  we  soon  find  that  the  per- 
ception of  truth  does  not  guarantee  obedience  to 
truth.  The  whole  stuff  of  our  belief  so  far  has 
been  a  matter  of  expression.  To  live  according 
to  our  aspirations  has  been  a  dream,  not  a  practice. 
Our  ideals  being  thus  far  only  intellectual  have 
but  a  single  dimension,  needing  performance  to 
add  a  second,  and  discipline  for  a  third.  But  as 
we  enter  upon  this  new  cycle  we  find  our  problems 
are  not  a  question  of  words  but  of  experience. 
They  must  be  lived  to  be  understood.  Words 
cannot  serve  us  further.  Then  too  the  stream  of 
life  is  so  complex  and  tumultuous  that  the  cycle 
or  rhythm  is  broken  into  a  hundred  billows,  cross- 

127 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

currents,  and  eddies.  These  are  accentuated  by 
our  novel-reading  and  our  study  of  history,  as 
well  as  by  contact  with  maturer  persons.  The 
course  of  one's  own  development  is  lost  among 
one's  sympathies.  Hence  the  attempt  to  follow 
the  historical  trend  of  the  cycle  of  experience 
seems  profitless.  And  though  the  influence  of  this 
cycle  upon  the  nature  of  our  beliefs  is  far  more 
profound  than  is  our  intellectual  history  taken  by 
itself,  nevertheless,  unlike  the  process  of  reillusion 
which  leads  us  to  greater  and  greater  expressive- 
ness, the  process  of  regeneration  leads  to  greater 
and  greater  reticence  because  it  is  a  recognition 
of  realities  which  become  progressively  more  and 
more  difficult  to  describe. 

A  few  reflections  must  suffice  to  intimate  the 
new  meaning  which  experience  brings  to  belief. 

Our  own  code  of  morals  arises  from  our  meta- 
physics. Those  propositions  which  we  find  funda- 
mentally to  be  so,  form  an  absolute  basis  for  our 
rules  of  conduct  stern  and  inexorable.  Conscious- 
ness is  primary  and  governs  its  objects.  Conscious- 
ness gives  to  objects  all  the  character  which  they 
have.  In  other  words  nature  is  parallel  to  our 
minds  because  nature  is  such  as  we  think  it. 
Every  part  of  consciousness  is  in  some  measure 
sacred  because  our  attitude  of  mind  takes  eff"ect 
instantaneously  in  the  world  around  us.  We  are 
creating  at  all  hours,  that  is,  at  all  hours  when 
we  make  any  choice  or  decision.  Each  one  of  these 

128 


CONCLUSION 

decisions  has  the  same  potency,  the  same  validity 
as  geologic  law.  Hence  the  thirst  for  improve- 
ment, or  the  tendency  to  seek  some  condition 
better  than  our  present  condition,  acting  at  all 
times  as  a  loadstone  for  consciousness,  is  real 
and  trustworthy. 

Ethically  mankind  seems  to  have  advanced  by 
a  series  of  stepping-stones.  These  are  the  rules  or 
standards  which  he  has  learned  to  adopt.  Thus 
the  Ten  Commandments  express  a  standard  or 
way  of  life  which  lies  in  the  line  or  direction  of 
progress.  So  also  in  all  branches  of  social  activity 
the  need  of  a  code  leads  to  the  establishment  of 
rules  of  conduct.  These  are  simply  the  modus 
vivendi  of  the  practical  ideal. 

The  expression  idealism  has  become  weakened 
by  the  preposterous  uses  to  which  it  has  been  put. 
The  world  is  full  of  ideal-mongers  who  wish  to 
claim  the  full  rights  of  ideas  for  whatever  nostrum 
or  palliative  their  fancy  may  have  suggested. 
Better  than  the  hazy  dreams  and  theories  in 
which  we  too  often  clothe  our  thirst  for  pleasure, 
the  clear  outlines  of  science  portray  ideas.  Each 
hypothesis,  or  formula,  astronomical,  chemical, 
physical,  biological,  in  its  place  and  for  its  use, 
carries  the  stamp  of  truth.  The  ideas  are  an  abso- 
lute test  as  to  each  group  of  facts  because  basic- 
ally the  facts  themselves  are  ideas,  but  the  physi- 
cal world  must  be  studied  for  the  particular  facts 
with  which  any  particular  intellect  must  deal. 
A  man  cannot  seek  into  his  mind  regardless  of  the 

129 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

outside  world  without  the  danger  of  losing  all 
relation  between  those  ideas  which  he  uses,  and 
those  facts  among  which  he  is  historically  thrown. 
Such  a  course  is  contrary  to  the  mandates  of  the 
ideas  themselves.  The  faithful  investigation  of 
the  external  world  is  unequivocally  prescribed  by 
the  human  mind.  But  the  intellect  must  exercise 
great  caution  in  judging  those  outlines  which 
appear  dim;  for  all  the  facts  which  we  cannot  see 
or  do  not  notice  we  shall  be  tempted  to  call 
visionary.  They  may  be  the  decisive  feature  of 
the  landscape  yet  we  shall  at  times  doubt  their 
reality.  But  it  is  by  a  perpetual  idealization  of 
our  problems  that  we  gain  the  surest  guidance  for 
true  progress. 

It  is  part  of  the  miracle  of  life  that  the  prin- 
ciples which  govern  it  are  so  simple.  In  truth,  all 
principles  come  from  one  root,  namely,  the  love 
of  right.  Religion  itself  is  no  more  than  this. 
Validity  of  choice,  or  the  actuality  of  the  will,  is 
axiomatic.  The  will  finds  in  life  the  free  oppor- 
tunity to  choose  between  a  better  and  a  worse 
alternative.  The  choice  of  the  better  promotes 
happiness,  the  choice  of  the  worse  promotes  un- 
happiness.  Fundamentally  there  is  but  one  ethics, 
one  philosophy  of  conduct,  namely,  to  prefer  al- 
ways and  everywhere  the  better  over  the  worse. 

The  will  works  by  effort.  When  the  heart 
chooses  right  without  effort,  it  has  come  into 
harmony  with  the  universal  spirit  because  of  the 
momentum  of  its  past  decisions,  decisions  where 

130 


CONCLUSION 

effort  was  necessary  to  the  choice  of  the  right 
alternative.  Yet  even  the  freedom  of  choice  itself 
owes  half  its  parentage  to  necessity.  The  thirst 
for  the  better  is  tyrannical  once  it  has  been  felt. 
There  is  no  escape  from  its  persistence.  Having 
known  a  better  life  than  the  one  we  are  now  living, 
we  cannot  contentedly  pursue  our  present  course 
further,  unless  it  furnishes  us  the  power  to  evolve 
into  that  better  condition  which  we  have  known 
or  seen. 

Now  whatever  a  man  most  wants  is  defended 
from  his  desire  by  an  insulation  of  difficulty.  This 
must  always  be  so  initially.  The  higher  good  must 
be  more  difficult  of  attainment  than  the  lower 
good  —  that  is  to  say,  more  good  is  guarded  by 
more  difficulty  because  human  nature  cannot  help 
prizing  more  highly  that  over  which  it  has  ex- 
pended effort  than  that  over  which  it  has  not; 
and  the  measure  of  the  effort,  or  some  equivalent 
of  effort,  is  the  measure  of  the  value. 

It  might  seem  from  this  that  if  the  most  good  is 
the  most  difficult,  we  should  find  a  dilemma  in 
that  a  life  of  straight  difficulty  would  be  a  life  of 
pure  unhappiness.  But  this  appearance  is  char- 
acteristic of  diflniculty;  and  it  is  this  very  fact 
which  gives  so  deep  a  value  to  sacrifice.  For  sacri- 
fice is  after  all  only  an  appearance.  If  your  sac- 
rifice be  genuine  you  cannot  escape  its  reward. 
Similarly  difficulty  cannot  remain  perpetual  in 
the  face  of  effort.  In  the  light  of  reason  sacrifice 
is  impossible  in  its  literal  sense;  for  it  is  the  giving- 

131 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

up  of  the  obvious  for  the  underlying  advantage. 
It  is  lopping  off  inferior  branches.  True  sacrifice 
is  discipline  of  the  will,  the  abandonment  of  cher- 
ished wishes  which  do  not  strengthen  us.  But 
before  the  act  one  cannot  know,  at  least  cannot 
appreciate  its  reward.  It  is  an  act  of  utter  courage, 
a  complete  unselfishness. 

Difficulty  is  an  objective  test.  We  do  not  seek 
it.  We  seek  a  palpable  good,  and  pursue  it, 
whether  or  not  the  way  be  difficult.  If  we  blindly 
pursue  difficulties  for  their  own  sake,  thirsting  for 
some  reward,  like  enough  our  pains  will  prove 
barren.  Yet  normally  in  the  honest  pursuit  of 
duty  and  human  benefit,  the  overcoming  diffi- 
culty proves  in  itself  and  for  its  own  sake  a  cause 
of  happiness.  Progress  built  upon  pain  is  ulti- 
mately founded  upon  a  basis  of  joy.  Difficulty  is 
but  a  partial  and  negative  test  of  what  is  good, 
and  it  is  against  the  law  of  the  spirit  to  remember 
a  difficulty  once  it  is  past. 

Nothing  can  exempt  us  from  the  duty  of  choos- 
ing as  our  own  the  highest  ideal  we  have  known. 
Nothing  can  exempt  us  from  the  duty  of  attempt- 
ing to  realize  that  ideal  in  life.  Difficult  that  reali- 
zation must  be;  but  the  ideal  itself  is  something 
positive  which  in  the  end  knows  nothing  of  diffi- 
culty. If  difficulty  were  the  only  test  life  would  be 
simple,  morality  would  be  cold,  narrow,  and 
severe;  but  that  which  leads  us  forward  is  not 
thus.  The  positive  elements  of  life  are  beautiful, 
involving  many  forms  of  excellence. 

132 


CONCLUSION 

Thus,  when  we  come  to  seek  the  better  way  of 
life,  and  in  so  doing  reflect  upon  our  standard  of 
conduct,  we  are  struck  with  the  superiority  of  the 
unconscious  virtues.  If  we  could  only  be  guided 
unconsciously  by  right  instincts!  Spontaneous 
activity  is  so  much  lovelier  than  conscious  effort. 
Spontaneity  is  joyous  and  regal.  Thus  at  times 
we  become  identified  with  our  surroundings,  and 
follow  luminous  methods  of  behavior  which  merge 
personal  satisfactions  into  social  and  sometimes 
wholly  unselfish  benefits.  At  times  also  we  seem 
to  be  swept  along  by  inevitable  meliorations. 
Things  grow  better  and  better  with  an  impetus 
out  of  all  proportion  to  the  apparent  energy  in- 
volved. It  is  the  fruitage  of  old  endeavors  long 
forgotten.  If  the  spirit  floats  us  along,  independ- 
ent action  of  the  will  mars  all.  But  when  the 
golden  tide  is  ebbing,  it  then  becomes  our  duty 
to  strive  for  the  light.  The  intellect  must  explore 
the  causes  of  success,  and  the  heart  search  itself 
in  meekness.  The  foster  nurse  of  effort  is  humil- 
ity. Without  conscious  struggle  spiritual  impulses 
will  not  come,  and  spontaneity  is  a  heavenly  gift, 
not  easily  to  be  won. 

The  lilt  and  song  of  life  break  into  all  formal- 
ism. The  self  is  in  perpetual  transference  from 
one  thing  to  another.  The  soul  is  always  migrat- 
ing, always  giving  itself  to  something  apparently 
other  than  itself.  It  is  careless  of  its  form  of  life, 
careless  of  the  vehicle  it  uses,  so  only  that  while 
in  use  the  vehicle  is  sweet  and  clean.    The  soul 

133 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

feeds  on  vision  and  must  not  be  obstructed  by 
appetites,  humors,  and  tempers.  It  is  careful  of 
its  own  purity,  its  own  constancy,  careless  of  the 
means  it  uses,  and  thus  the  body  is  subject  to 
any  call  which  the  generosity  of  the  soul  may 
make.  Hence  comes  the  seeming  paradox  that 
though  principles  are  subordinate  to  life  a  man 
must  die  for  principles.  The  principle  is  above 
the  individual,  not  above  the  larger  sympathy 
and  happiness  for  which  his  individual  life  is 
spent. 

But  the  frail  human  will  at  first  finds  the  prac- 
tice of  ethics  quite  beyond  its  undeveloped  powers. 
A  short  acquaintance  with  experience  intimates 
that  there  is  much  to  learn  from  life  besides  rules 
of  conduct.  Our  discipline  by  no  means  conforms 
to  our  wishes  or  expectations.  Facts  not  only 
have  dimensions,  but  mass.  When  they  begin  to 
move,  or  when  we  begin  to  move  among  them, 
we  learn  our  relative  strength  or  impotence. 

In  attempting  to  put  ideals  in  practice,  the 
individual  meets  these  difficulties:  — 

(i)  The  periodicity  of  his  own  temper  and  con- 
dition running  in  apparently  fatal  courses  upsets 
his  self-confidence  and  distorts  his  view  of  right 
and  wrong.  Once  in  so  many  days  the  man  grows 
a  crop  of  good  resolutions.  These  have  a  life  his- 
tory of  a  limited  number  of  hours,  ten,  twenty, 
a  hundred,  quite  independently  of  any  carefully 
reasoned  wishes  he  may  entertain,  and  then  at  the 

134 


CONCLUSION 

appropriate  time  the  resolutions  disappear,  leav- 
ing perhaps  some  trifling  fruitage;  but  little  more. 
With  due  regularity  the  efforts  slump,  and  he 
becomes  the  victim  of  a  shocking  indifl'erence. 
The  habits  and  moods  run  in  this  tidal  manner. 
The  temptations  surge  up  about  so  often;  yet  the 
weather  changes  of  the  heart  and  mind  are  as 
whimsical  and  capricious  as  the  meteorology  of 
the  temperate  zone,  seeming  to  show  little  rela- 
tion to  principles  and  ideals. 

But  there  are  greater  changes  not  readily  ob- 
served at  first,  changes  which  run  over  many 
months  or  years,  a  sort  of  organic  growth  and 
decomposition.  A  downward  tendency  takes 
possession  of  the  individual,  a  demon  seems  to 
impersonate  his  ideals,  in  order  to  mock  him. 

"O  misery  on't!  the  wise  gods  seal  our  eyes. 
In  our  own  filth  drop  our  clear  judgments;  make  us 
Adore  our  errors,  laugh  at  us  while  we  strut 
To  our  confusion." 

There  are  many  symptoms  of  the  downward 
course.  More  and  more  frequently  we  submit  to 
the  deadly  experience  of  knowing  an  act  is  wrong 
and  yet  doing  it.  We  feel  within  us  the  option  of 
choice  between  right  and  wrong  and  deliberately 
choose  wrong.  If  we  stop  to  think,  the  very  fact 
that  this  can  be  so  mocks  our  reason.  When 
this  experience  happens  often  we  become  aware 
of  a  more  permanent  indifference  creeping  over 
the  heart,  like  the  advance  of  the  glacial  cap  from 

135 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

the  pole.  We  see  also  that  races  and  nations  de- 
cay; and  from  the  influence  of  that  process  the 
individual  cannot  escape.  He  cannot  arrest  the 
laws  of  decomposition.  There  seems  no  escape 
from  that  conclusion  which  reason  has  already 
faced,  conquered,  and  abandoned,  namely,  that 
our  apparent  freedom  of  choice  is  an  illusion,  and 
that  the  downward  trend  of  our  apparent  deci- 
sions is  utterly  inevitable. 

(2)  A  second  difficulty  is  that  dynamic  forces 
in  the  world,  whether  they  be  right  or  wrong, 
have  a  strength  out  of  all  proportion  to  our  esti- 
mate of  that  strength  before  we  have  come  in 
direct  contact  with  them.  The  idealist  to  his  dis- 
may becomes  magnetized  by  the  world,  dances 
as  it  dances,  sins  as  it  sins.  When  he  feels  the 
terrific  pressure  of  social  events  his  tongue  begins 
of  itself  to  tell  lies.  He  did  not  know  before  that 
he  was  a  coward.  He  has  no  thought  of  abandon- 
ing his  principles,  but  there  he  is,  a  puny  fate- 
ridden  fact,  a  bit  of  iron  filing  surrounded  by 
powerful  electric  currents.  Of  what  consequence 
can  his  principles  be? 

Meanwhile  fierce  thirsts  for  pleasure  assail  the 
soul.  Emotions  which  have  been  repressed  be- 
cause inappropriate  to  the  occasion  on  which  they 
arose,  seek  any  and  every  outlet.  With  the  faith 
in  personal  initiative  and  spiritual  law  shaken,  the 
dams  begin  to  crumble,  and  such  personal  power 
as  we  have  already  stored  begins  to  ebb  away. 
The  devil  has  ever  outwitted  human  beings.  The 

136 


CONCLUSION 

self-indulgences  quickly  seize  each  upon  some 
virtue;  as  the  guests  of  a  fancy-dress  ball  pick 
upon  some  costume,  and  thus  skilfully  adorned 
play  out  their  parts  with  marvellous  facility. 
Well  for  the  boy  if  the  habits  of  his  bringing-up 
are  wholesome,  and  thoroughly  stamped  in  his 
nature.  For  no  amount  of  instruction  can  save 
him  now.  Visions  of  the  fairest  ideal  avail  not. 
And  with  the  bitterness  of  disappointment  too 
often  our  mortality  asserts  itself  so  far  that  we 
conclude  our  own  life  to  be  wholly  disparate  from 
the  life  of  goodness  and  beauty. 

At  his  strongest,  man  is  not  entirely  his  own 
master;  in  certain  relations,  not  at  all.  He  is  ever 
a  fragment  only  of  larger  unities,  where  his  influ- 
ence counts  for  little  or  nothing.  He  cannot  easily 
purge  his  native  land  of  its  corruptions.  He  can- 
not, except  in  rare  instances,  ward  off  national 
disasters.  He  and  all  that  he  loves  most  dearly 
are  at  the  mercy  of  the  burglar  or  the  mob  —  of 
any  group  who  choose  to  break  certain  simple 
rules  to  which  civilized  people  habitually  trust. 
The  seeds  of  revolution  lie  within  the  state  as  the 
seeds  of  disease  lie  within  the  individual.  What- 
ever the  form  of  government,  the  vast  common- 
wealths of  civilization  are  tunnelled  with  decay. 

The  point  of  view  of  the  members  in  a  com- 
munity tends  to  degenerate  with  the  accumula- 
tion of  wealth,  of  power,  and  of  luxury.  The  will 
which  fought  its  way  through  difficulties  to  the 
mastery  of  circumstances  becomes  wilful.    The 

137 


CYCLES    OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

weaker  beneficiaries  of  a  strong  man's  success 
become  envious.  The  intellect  runs  riot  and  al- 
lows its  estimate  of  moral  values  to  fall  into  con- 
fusion. The  truth  is  held  lightly,  and  the  ameni- 
ties themselves  foster  all  manner  of  speciousness, 
as  when  Philip  II  of  Spain  was  described  in  the 
period  of  the  Inquisition  as  a  prince  "clement, 
benign,  and  debonair,"  or  when  our  Secretary  of 
State,  addressing  Germany  in  regard  to  the  Lusi- 
tania,  wrote  on  May  14,  191 5,  "Recalling  the 
humane  and  enlightened  attitude  hitherto  as- 
sumed by  the  Imperial  German  Government," 
etc.  The  tendency  which  makes  toward  the  abase- 
ment of  words,  makes  also  toward  the  abasement 
of  customs  and  manners.  People  begin  to  measure 
festivities  by  laughter  and  noise  rather  than  by 
real  enjoyment.  Instead  of  achievement  display 
is  sought.  Instead  of  the  approval  of  conscience 
the  approval  of  the  newspapers.  Instead  of  a 
strict  adherence  to  facts,  the  scrutiny  of  opinions, 
the  influence  of  names  and  reputations;  until  the 
community  is  reduced  to  a  shadow  of  existence, 
fed  upon  artifice  and  sham,  and  the  spectacle  of  a 
savagery  which  is  real,  and  robber  tactics  put  in 
practice  by  a  fellow  community  arouses  slumber- 
ing faculties,  and  men  recognize  with  a  sudden 
shock  how  much  weakness  has  been  harbored  in 
complacency. 

But  the  very  dangers  which  startle  us  are  dis- 
guised friends.  The  soul  is  as  much  at  home  in 
unstable  conditions  as  in  peace.  The  dissolution 

138 


CONCLUSION 

of  bonds,  the  abrogation  of  conventions  which 
loyal  persons  keep  as  a  matter  of  fairness,  leaves 
man  free  to  build  afresh.  Emancipation  is  a  direct 
challenge  to  power.  When  King  George's  govern- 
ment broke  down  in  New  England  the  people  of 
Massachusetts  proved  their  ability  to  maintain 
civil  life  without  a  government.  When  an  honest 
man  is  free  to  use  drastic  methods  honesty  usually 
prevails.  Corruptions  are  apt  to  work  their  own 
cure  in  time  through  the  reversion  of  the  sufferers 
to  rugged  first  principles.  In  the.  day  of  crisis  any 
institution  may  be  challenged;  and  we  may  see 
one  wholesome  effect  of  crises  in  the  revelation 
that  most  of  our  institutions  are  provisional,  and 
much  in  need  of  change.  The  fearless  citizen  as 
he  plunges  into  a  turbulence  wherein  all  stand- 
ards are  tested,  pursues  his  ideal  in  foul  weather 
as  in  fair,  loyal  to  his  own  sphere  and  what  is 
best  within  himself. 

Thus  a  man  looks  beyond  any  code  or  principle  ( 
which  his  intellect  can  formulate  for  guidance  in 
life.  He  must  rise  by  the  force  of  a  power  within 
him,  he  must  rise  toward  the  communion  of  a  * 
spirit  above  him.  As  every  boat  in  the  bay  catches 
the  wind,  therefrom  deriving  the  power  to  move, 
so  every  religious  sect  is  actuated  by  the  spirit, 
nor  is  one  more  entitled  to  it  than  another.  The 
same  devotion,  the  same  faith,  the  same  rever- 
ence lives  in  all  the  great  religions.  Though  the 
thought  of  this  unity  seems  unreal  as  we  abstract 

139 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

it  from  the  ceremonial  and  pictured  ritual  in  which 
it  is  variously  enshrined,  that  unity  still  is  there. 

How  foolishly  we  seek  for  special  manifesta- 
tions. When  the  processes  of  the  world  are  recog- 
nized as  lawful,  the  undisciplined  heart  begins  to 
crave  for  something  extra-lawful.  Men  wish  their 
religion  to  do  something  for  them  which  the  nat- 
ural laws  as  they  conceive  them  cannot  do.  But 
in  no  sense  is  religion  a  lawbreaker.  Nor  can  you 
have  correctly  interpreted  your  law,  if  it  can  be 
broken.  The  controversy  between  faith  and/ea- 
son  is  due  to  a  weak  estimate  of  both  faith  and 
reason.  Reason  is  the  language  of  faith.  You 
never  have  faith  in  what  your  reason  disapproves. 
Faith  is  the  matrix  of  life  as  belief  is  the  matrix 
of  thought;  and  faith  departs  from  reason  only  in 
so  far  as  it  acts  as  a  sort  of  momentum  which 
carries  us  across  unreasoned  abysses;  but  faith  is 
always  groping  for  a  fresh  hold  upon  reason. 
Health  presupposes  a  condition  of  trust  between 
the  two  as  the  heart  and  head  are  strong  when 
they  work  together. 

No  one  is  without  faith.  It  is  only  a  question 
of  what  the  faith  of  each  man  comprises. 

"When  me  he  flies  I  am  the  wings, 
I  am  the  doubter  and  the  doubt." 

The  admission  of  the  existence  of  God  is  of  no 
great  consequence.  It  is  only  a  question  of  how 
many  steps  a  man  goes  toward  the  unknown, 
before  he  is  forced  to  admit  the  existence  of  that 

140 


CONCLUSION 

which  most  people  call  God.  How  personal  this 
reality  is,  depends  upon  the  individual  character 
of  the  worshipper. 

Intellectual  difficulties  ever  beset  the  attempt 
to  particularize  God.  That  is  because  the  attempt 
is  vain;  but  these  difficulties  arise  from  and  end 
with  ourselves.  So  it  is  also  with  our  worry  over 
the  enormous  profusion  of  life  which  seems  to  us 
superfluous  or  distasteful.  All  life  must  have  equal 
rights.  We  are  all  striving  for  a  way  of  life  which 
will  work.  The  attempts  of  the  rattlesnake  and 
mosquito  are  parallel  with  our  own,  and  because 
these  and  other  features  of  our  surroundings  annoy 
us  it  is  no  reason  to  see  a  lack  of  benevolence  in 
the  universe  or  abandon  or  make  light  of  our  own 
attempts  to  live  well.  Our  objection  to  these  alien 
examples  of  the  universal  force  is  a  peculiarity  of 
ourselves. 

Universal  goodness  is  utterly  impartial.  The 
consciousness  of  this  helps  us  in  the  discipline  of 
prayer.  We  cannot  pray  to  a  universal  spirit  for 
particular  benefits.  We  must  earn  particular 
benefits  by  particular  efforts.  There  is  no  other 
way  to  get  them.  Only  as  we  sink  our  peculiari- 
ties and  find  the  universal  elements  of  self  can  we 
receive  religious  help.  Prayer  is  first  a  recognition  \ 
and  a  discipline  and  then  an  inflowing  of  magnet-  \ 
ism.  The  potency  of  an  electric  generator  lies  in 
nature.  We  can  avail  ourselves  of  it  if  we  will. 
The  act  of  prayer  is  an  act  of  placing  one's  self 
60  as  to  be  magnetized  by  a  deeper  current,  a 

141 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

current  always  available,  always  motive,  always 
sure.    By  our  faith  we  tap  the  universal  stream. 

But  we  have  many  subtle  religious  impulses 
we  scarcely  ever  think  to  recognize  as  such.  The 
nearness  of  nature,  and  the  heart's  response,  the 
wind  in  the  oak  trees  and  the  fragrance  of  the 
summer  bushes,  how  utterly  sincere  and  serene 
are  these.  He  that  sings  because  his  heart  is  over- 
flowing from  the  beauty  of  God's  temple  is  un- 
conscious that  his  song  reflects  that  beauty.  He 
is  the  true  priest,  the  authentic  minister  of  God. 
The  original  religious  sanctuary  of  all  the  races  is 
the  great  outdoors.  The  sunlight  burns  upon  the 
altar.  The  vegetation  is  the  vestment  of  God. 
The  flowers  give  us  incense.  The  waves  in  har- 
mony with  sky  and  cloud  and  shore  give  illustra- 
tion of  a  perfect  law,  and  these  weather  processes 
passing  over  and  around  us  unite  the  individual 
immediately  with  transcendent  things. 

Yet  man  does  not  remove  a  stone  out  of  nature 
by  raising  it  into  a  temple.  The  cathedrals  with 
their  chimes,  their  stained-glass  windows,  their 
mass  of  sculpture,  belong  as  truly  to  nature  as 
the  trees  and  flowers.  They  touch  hidden  sources 
of  emotion  which  having  known  we  would  not  be 
without.  There  is  a  place  in  the  universal  religion 
for  all  the  shrines.  The  deeper  personality  recog- 
nizes the  sanctuaries  of  all  the  races  —  Mosque, 
Parthenon,  or  Cathedral.  The  universe  is  our 
temple,  the  worship  is  our  life;  for  a  life  which  is 
not  acceptable  to  God  is  no  life  at  all. 
.     142 


CONCLUSION 

Real  life  is  worship,  and  each  man's  deepest 
concern  is  his  own  conduct.  There  is  no  room  for 
mechanistic  conceptions  in  his  personal  problems. 
He  is  free;  and  for  progress  the  original  impulse 
must  come  from  within  himself.  At  the  lowest 
ebb  if  one  could  only  remember  that  this  particu- 
lar hour  and  minute  is  unprecedented,  never  had 
its  like  before,  how  great  the  opportunity  of  that 
realization.  From  the  standpoint  of  ideas  there  is 
no  such  thing  as  a  defective  will.  All  weakness 
is  due  to  mechanical  obstructions  from  among 
which  the  soul  must  emerge.  We  recognize  the 
lion  impulse,  monkey  impulse,  man  impulse, 
made  such  by  habit;  and  again,  the  "eye  for  an 
eye"  impulse  and  the  Christian  impulse.  All 
these  live  by  the  same  right  of  creation,  but  none 
are  final.  Habit  gradually  creates  a  vessel  appar- 
ently irrefragable.  It  thus  seems  like  a  miracle 
if  the  weak  will  becomes  strong.  A  man  must 
accomplish  the  apparently  impossible  to  advance 
from  the  rut  of  evil  habits;  and  yet  he  constantly 
does  so  advance.  There  comes  a  time  when  the 
old  vessel  is  broken  up,  and  life  enlarges.  The 
least  effort  of  the  dynamic  will  may  start  some- 
thing new.  Looking  back  on  periods  of  stagnation 
we  are  sometimes  struck  with  the  nicety  of  bal- 
ance between  good  and  evil,  perceiving  too  late 
how  very  slight  a  push  would  have  set  our  affairs 
going  in  the  right  direction,  and  saved  many 
hours  of  squandered  life.  But  there  is  no  expres- 
sible law  which  can  explain  in  measurements  of 

143 


CYCLES     OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

nervous  energy  this  increase  of  power  in  an  indi- 
vidual when  he  does  right.  We  seldom  know 
which  little  effort  is  the  true  one,  which  act  of 
self-conquest  has  turned  the  tide  of  our  affairs, 
or  which  choice  among  the  maze  of  paths  we  trod 
led  toward  better  things.  We  are  subject  to  an 
imperceptible  guidance,  a  mysterious  intelligence 
as  to  our  deserts;  and  it  is  good  to  be  always 
striving,  always  under  discipline.  We  never  know 
beforehand  the  antecedents  or  instructions  of  the 
simplest  messenger  who  comes  to  the  door. 

Though  the  original  push  must  come  from  in- 
side one's  self,  progress  involves  a  readjustment 
to  that  which  is  outside  of  self.  It  is  from  among 
relationships  with  things  external  that  the  means 
of  advance  must  be  grasped.  One  is  forced  to 
experiment  and  learn.  At  last  after  many  false 
tries  a  man  finds  that  there  is  one  thing  which  he 
has  got  to  do.  Other  things  were  ephemeral,  this 
is  native  to  his  abilities.  Thus  it  comes  about  that 
the  discouraging  aspects  of  life,  the  degenerative 
process,  the  periods  of  wallowing  and  degrada- 
tion are  dispelled  by  the  discovery  of  some  need 
in  the  world  which  matches  one's  natural  apti- 
tudes, so  that  one  finds  himself  to  have  a  special 
use.  And  perhaps  he  may  then  find  that  all  un- 
happiness,  all  his  floundering  was  but  a  part  of  his 
development  toward  this  one  thing.  Unpopular- 
ity, moroseness,  lustfulness,  drunkenness,  what- 
ever may  have  been  his  special  form  of  diflBiCulty 
has  taught  him  the  things  he  needed  to  know. 

144 


CONCLUSION 

The  world  responds  to  us  in  the  measure  of  our 
love  of  men.  It  is  thus  our  gauge.  We  adjust  our- 
selves gradually  with  the  help  of  its  indications. 
The  world  is  continually  "  knocking  us  into  shape," 
nor  can  we  escape  its  din  and  roar.  Even  the 
recluse  finds  the  world  batters  against  him  in  the 
measure  of  his  unused  capacities. 

Yet  the  man  has  within  himself  a  moral  force 
which  gives  him  sanction  sometimes  to  stand 
alone.  By  that  same  law  of  indirection  the  rela- 
tive appearance  of  the  man  and  the  world  may 
vary  with  the  shifting  of  the  polarization  of 
thought.  Galileo  called  the  Copernican  theory  of 
the  earth's  motion  a  "Mathematical  Capriccio.^^ 
In  Rome  at  that  day  it  was  not  suitable  to  call 
it  truth.  But  with  the  passing  of  centuries  the 
same  thought  becomes  orthodox.  That  selfish- 
ness which  distresses  one's  friends  may  be  due 
to  maladjustment.  It  may  have  a  quite  definite 
cause  in  some  occult  injustice  which  the  com- 
munity does  to  the  individual.  The  selfishness 
may  express  a  state  of  electric  tension  destined 
to  pull  the  world  toward  the  man. 

But  the  burden  of  proof  is  on  the  individual. 
It  is  not  for  him  to  condemn  the  world.  His  func- 
tion is  to  keep  to  his  own  aim,  and  if  the  world 
ignores  him,  he  must  conclude  not  that  the  world 
is  wrong,  or  his  ideal  false,  but  that  his  workman- 
ship in  expressing  his  ideal  was  poor. 

Howsoever  these  things  be,  a  man  must  strike 
out  fearlessly  on  his  own  path.    Success  attends 

145 


CYCLES    OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

those  who  speak  directly  and  hit  hard.  Facts  are 
always  deeper  than  the  forms  which  describe 
them;  and  success  is  interpreted  in  varying  terms. 
Its  outward  manifestations  are  relatively  unim- 
portant, and  its  highest  test  is  the  accomplish- 
ment wrought  by  inward  fire. 

A  man's  relationships  are  sacred;  his  work 
cannot  be  taken  as  something  apart  from  these. 
It  is  in  and  through  these  that  his  duties  and 
tasks  get  their  pertinency.  It  is  our  human 
bonds  which  carry  on  their  unseen  filaments  the 
original  generative  power  of  love.  The  love  be- 
tween man  and  woman  is  a  profound  revelation 
into  the  heart  of  life,  but  even  this  overwhelming 
influence  does  not  escape  from  ethical  necessities, 
nor  do  the  offices  of  love  begin  and  end  with 
this  one  relationship. 

Love  is  in  every  breast,  uniting  all  mankind, 
single  or  married,  in  one  common  understanding, 
and  as  we  grow,  our  sympathies  extend  into  wider 
circles;  and  the  craving  for  particular  circum- 
stances which  we  once  felt  absolutely  essential  to 
our  well-being  loses  its  poignancy.  Nothing  is  so 
misunderstood  as  Platonic  love.  If  we  read 
Plato's  poetry,  it  is  the  poetry  of  a  mighty,  all- 
inclusive  passion.  It  is  an  allegorical  assertion  of 
the  divinity  of  love.  Were  the  poet  to  gratify  his 
lust,  he  has  no  more  gratified  the  imperative  de- 
mand which  haunted  him  than  if  he  had  drunk 
water  to  satisfy  his  longing  for  the  sea.  For  some 
it  is  gratification  enough  to  be  near  the  beloved, 

146 


CONCLUSION 

for  others  to  touch,  for  one  to  hear  her  speak,  for 
another  to  hear  her  sing,  and  each  gratification 
breeds  yet  another  desire.  But  the  poet  can  never 
be  satisfied,  for  he  knows  too  well  how  inaccessible 
is  the  beloved  that  he  loves.  All  the  beauty  and 
knowledge  that  intellect  can  give  him  cannot 
suffice  to  bring  the  two  together.  He  has  seen  the 
nature  of  the  light  which  shines  on  all  the  inci- 
dents of  life  —  a  light  accessible  to  all,  but  not 
to  be  grasped,  not  to  be  appropriated,  not  to  be 
turned  to  a  petty  use. 

The  best  in  love  is  always  pure.  The  path  to 
the  temple  is  steep,  the  guardians  of  its  treasures 
are  stern.  There  comes  up  the  picture  of  a  face 
seared  by  thirty  years  of  pain,  a  lowering  sky, 
raindrops  driving  among  the  pine  trees,  one  of 
New  England's  sacred  sanctuaries.  A  lonely  man 
buries  all  that  was  left  to  him  of  life.  In  the  retro- 
spect is  bitterness,  in  the  future  despair.  This 
was  one  who  loved,  and  suffered  unrecognized  for 
an  ideal.  Just  an  unknown  incident  in  the  life  of 
truth.  Oh,  you  who  live  in  comfortable  homes, 
and  hear  the  laughter  of  children,  enjoy  the 
warmth  of  a  circle  of  cheerful  friends,  and  the 
performance  of  useful  work,  what  do  you  know  of 
sorrow,  what  do  you  know  of  life.'^  Some  kind 
angel  guided  you  among  the  pitfalls.  But  you  are 
surrounded  by  mourners  and  broken  souls  who 
know  no  such  contentment  as  you  have  known. 
Faces  which  reflect  the  deep  recesses  of  human 
nature  sanctify  our  own  more  thoughtless  lives. 

147 


CYCLES    OF     PERSONAL     BELIEF 

And  there  is  he  who  will  not  break  the  marriage 
vow.  Is  he  reading  problem  novels?  Is  he  han- 
kering after  an  easier,  more  selfish  standard 
which  might  permit  a  wrench,  a  parting,  and  then 
a  surfeit  of  stifling  roses,  shutting  out  a  past  where 
one  must  not  look?  Not  so.  He  is  a  loyal,  lonely 
soul  who  bears  his  full  measure  of  pain.  He  is 
more  man  than  a  thousand  pleasure-seekers  who 
affront  the  name  of  love  with  their  talk  of  afiini- 
ties.  A  simple  stern  sacrifice  makes  him  real. 
We  are  one  stuff  and  substance  throughout  the 
community.  The  word  and  deed  of  one  is  the 
bread  and  meat  of  another,  and  no  surgery  can 
cut  apart  our  relatedness.  You  whom  the  years 
are  just  revolving  into  the  rose  glow  of  love,  you 
little  realize  in  your  purity  what  you  owe  to  those 
who  did  not  yield  to  great  temptations,  but  main- 
tained without  recompense  the^  unwritten  laws 
of  home. 

The  world  being  what  it  is,  the  form  of  our 
ethics  is  unessential,  so  long  as  we  are  loyal  to 
what  we  mean  to  be,  so  long  as  we  are  in  duty 
bound  to  the  happiness  of  one  another.  We  need 
not  fear  that  the  maintenance  of  a  standard  is 
going  to  work  some  injustice  upon  us.  It  is  an 
evidence  of  progress  that  standards  of  conduct 
should  be  here,  and  that  we  should  be  committed 
to  them.  We  fear  to  lose  our  freedom,  but  we 
need  not  fear.  The  happy  life  is  not  bought  but 
given.  We  do  not  need  extravagant  pleasures, 
nor  those  effects  and  luxuries  which  are  highly 

148 


CONCLUSION 

prized.  Weedy  impulses  are  good  fertilizers  if 
ploughed  back  by  self-denial  into  the  soil  of  self; 
and  if  we  learn  to  cultivate  those  activities  which 
mean  growth  the  harvest  will  not  disappoint  us. 
As  the  heart  quickens,  the  spirit  of  joy  steals  into 
common  activities.  Our  interests  attach  them- 
selves to  simpler  and  ever  simpler  objects,  and 
we  feel  more  deference  for  all  the  manifestations 
of  life.  We  are  not  so  dazzled  as  once  by  glory 
and  fame,  and  ignore  or  forget  the  scorn  of  society 
that  we  do  not  seek  its  prizes.  It  is  enough  to 
feel  the  heart  of  nature  beating.  The  huckle- 
berries in  the  wind-swept  pasture  have  gained 
an  ambrosial  taste,  and  the  hint  of  paradise 
floats  upon  the  fragrance  of  the  clethra  blossoms. 
But  the  soul  thus  finding  a  home  in  little 
things,  building  its  shrine  by  the  roadside,  soon 
moves  on.  Our  moments  of  peace  are  given  for 
the  reception  of  new  visions,  and  these,  however 
gently  the  hint  at  first  is  given,  are  each  and  all 
incentive  to  action.  Human  life  embosomed  in 
paradise  at  one  pole,  plunges  into  turmoil  at  the 
other.  The  struggle  is  not  over,  the  problems  are 
not  solved. 


POSTSCRIPT 

Cheerfulness  is  the  seed-wheat  of  heaven. 
When  cheerfulness  is  the  ruling  habit  for  all  man- 
kind how  rich  will  be  the  present,  how  tranquil 
the  passage  of  time.  The  truth  is  more  beautiful 
than  our  wildest  dream.  Hope  is  always  right 
and  never  wrong.  A  man  blindly  attaches  his 
hope  to  particular  things  erring  in  particulars, 
but  hope  meant  something  else  all  along.  Hope 
in  its  purity  knows  only  celestial  objects,  leads 
only  to  them.  It  is  to  teach  men  that  all  phil- 
osophy and  all  experience  but  play  the  part  of 
children  soon  outgrowing  all  the  things  they  say. 
At  any  moment  the  fresh  morning  world  may 
unveil  the  view  of  heaven,  the  sense  of  .beauty 
quicken  in  the  heart  —  all  reasoning  futile  in  the 
light  of  new  vision.  Poetry,  always  magical,  its 
systems,  forms  and  laws  passing  out  to  the  infin- 
ite in  every  direction,  embarks  us  upon  further 
and  yet  further  excursions  toward  the  boundless 
truth. 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U   .  5   .  A 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

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